Report from Australia
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DigitalBishop
- Posts: 44
- Joined: Fri Sep 01, 2006 12:56 pm
- Location: Reseda, CA
This is very sad indeed. As a student I've been warned by my instructors and more experienced peers not to modify my equipment. I've also been told and see this as the most important thing that anyone as told me:
If you take care of your equipment. Your equipment will take care of you.
If you take care of your equipment. Your equipment will take care of you.
Jamie Krasnoo
I see the linked post was published today but the accident happened at Forbes nearly a year ago - Jan 2007. I saw this accident and it was an awful thing to experience. We continued to race another 190km and my hands were sore the next day from holding on so tight to the basebar.
One thing the write up fails to mention is that pilot hand tumbled twice before and had been in some solid crash landings. One of his chute deployments landed him in a tree. The harness, while it had been modified as mentioned, was in all of the previous chute deployments and had probably seen better days.
More recently in Brazil (about 3 weeks ago) I witnessed a tumble about 400m below me. The pilot entered a very strong thermal flying very fast with full vg and did an outside loop in to a vertical tailslide and then tumbled about 5 times before his glider exploded. The pilot threw his chute, the bridle was fully extended and the chut still took a few more seconds to open. He then came down gently into a tree - with only very minor scratches.
These things come to mind for me regarding these accidents:
Overtuning your gear
Flying too slow in rough air with too much vg
Entering or exiting thermals flying slow with too much vg
Fly safe...
One thing the write up fails to mention is that pilot hand tumbled twice before and had been in some solid crash landings. One of his chute deployments landed him in a tree. The harness, while it had been modified as mentioned, was in all of the previous chute deployments and had probably seen better days.
More recently in Brazil (about 3 weeks ago) I witnessed a tumble about 400m below me. The pilot entered a very strong thermal flying very fast with full vg and did an outside loop in to a vertical tailslide and then tumbled about 5 times before his glider exploded. The pilot threw his chute, the bridle was fully extended and the chut still took a few more seconds to open. He then came down gently into a tree - with only very minor scratches.
These things come to mind for me regarding these accidents:
Overtuning your gear
Flying too slow in rough air with too much vg
Entering or exiting thermals flying slow with too much vg
Fly safe...