I've been in, seen and been around the aftermath of a few landings in
the trees - gliders and SELs. No injuries in the gliders, light
injuries in the SELs.

The gliders stayed in the canopy (except mine - stunted trees) and the
SELs came to rest on the ground - 2X the wt and twice the wing perhaps

No question the most damage to the gliders was removal from the trees
(and a loss of pilot dignity for the 70+ yo we had winch down with a
stop for pics half way down, hee hee.

The take-away message is "fly it in, don't stall it in". As long as you
fly it in, seems to be very surviveable. Stall it or spin/dive it seems
to be another matter. Mininum speed/energy is different than a stall.

wrote:
On Wed, 08 Jun 2005 23:29:42 GMT, Matt Whiting
wrote:


Maule Driver wrote:

Matt

Some years ago the BBC was filming, in Canada, from a light aircraft
(not sure if 4 or 6 seat) when the aircraft was unable to climb.
I assume due to downdraft exceeding aircraft climb. The aircraft was
descending and the pilot had no option but to fly into a forrest. The
outside camera was torn off as it went into the trees but the
cameraman inside kept filming the accident. You could see the
professionalism of the pilot as he flew the aircraft all the way to
the crash. There was one point where you could even see a slight
deviation as the pilot slightly maneuvered between the trees.

The result was not a disaster and the aircraft came to rest in the
trees with the most damage being done to the passengers when trying to
climb out of the trees. Once on the ground the presenter decided to do
a piece to camera. This was an amazing piece of filming and shows that
you should always 'Fly the plane' :-)