WingNutz Blows Kagel Saddle Launch (Redux)

[WingNutz]

Christian Williams pointed out that this post should have been in the "Safety and Incidents in Flight" section of this Forum, where people might look for an accident report. He's right, I ditzed, putting it in "General Discussion."

This report is revised slightly, based on information I've received since I first published it last Friday.

I blew my launch last Thursday, January 7, at the Kagel Saddle launch, where the paragliders launch. I think I jumped into a glider that wasn't flying yet. I should have run harder and I should have given more careful consideration to the switchy wind conditions.

I was attempting flight in my Wills U-2 160. Even though my ATOS rigid wing (It’s pronounced Ah-Tose by its German designer) is giving me excellent flights, it is way too easy to fly, and I have resolved that I have to take at least every third flight in a flexwing, so I don’t forget how.

I decided to launch the “Saddle� launch at Kagel Mountain because the launch conditions were mild and I wanted to sharpen my shallow slope skills. The wind sock was slack when we arrived at launch, and showed wind blowing in lightly at times. I never saw it show wind blowing down. At the main Kagel launch, the wind was blowing in from zero to three knots. Student Dan, Emily Brown, and Erika Klein had excellent launches, and “Santa Claus� Tom Allen had launched the saddle with his paraglider. I was the last pilot on the hill.

I have launched the Kagel Saddle about ten or twelve times. The Saddle launch has a relatively shallow slope for 30 feet or so, where there is a "lip," at the top of a much steeper downslope. At the Saddle, the wind was blowing straight in at 2-3 knots, although a pilot in the air (Emily Brown) reported that the windsock on top of the mountain, 150 feet away and 40 feet higher, showed light wind blowing down. She later told me that the windsock had shown light north wind several times while we were setting up, which I failed to notice. Erwin McDavid was still at launch, thank goodness, waiting for me to go.

I was very deliberate in starting the launch at a walk, then ran down the shallow slope. I was running pretty fast and thought I had enough airspeed, but before the glider lifted me off, I jumped into the glider. I do not believe that I popped the nose up. The glider mushed and I tried to pull in, but I was too close to the ground to pull in very much. So I had to let the bar out a little, hoping that I could mush away from the slope, but the glider was stalled and couldn’t fly away.

There were skeletons of Manzanita bushes (left after last year's fire) on the slope, and I started to hit them. The control bar went through a small branch, which broke away, but the left leading edge then hit a more substantial branch more than 2/3 of the way out on the wing, which spun me to the left. The glider crashed into a Manzanita skeleton that had many branches only about 1� in diameter, which cushioned the crash. From the time I jumped in the glider to the crash was probably five to six seconds.

I ended up nose uphill into the dirt, about 100 feet downslope from the lip of the Saddle launch, slightly to the right. I was unhurt, so I unhooked to walk out so that people would see that I was okay. The keel was broken forward of the lower wire attachment, and the broken end poked up through the sail. The downtubes are okay as far as I could see. One wire, a flying wire I believe, was broken. One of the two inboard top surface ribs were broken about a foot from the aft ends, and I couldn’t remove them because of the jagged ends catching in the batten pockets. I broke down the glider, except that I couldn’t remove the tip wands. One wheel bracket is bent.

Tom Cornelius, the paraglider pilot, top-landed, and helped me pack up the glider and carry it up the slope. He says that he has blown launches there several times and hit the Manzanita skeletons. I believe that I might have been able to fly away if the Manzanita skeletons had not been there.

I believe that the main cause of the crash was that I did not launch aggressively enough. I should have kept running hard until the glider lifted me. Greblo noted that when you jump into a glider that hasn't lifted you off, the sudden wing loading will cause the glider to mush.

Because it is possible that the conditions contributed to this crash, I will never again try to launch the Saddle on a marginal day, or when the wind is switchy. Nevertheless I still think that a stronger launch would have prevented this accident.