On Thursday, November 14, 2013 1:27:22 PM UTC-5, kirk.stant wrote:
after all...spinning off a PTT is remarkably bad flying - and probably the sign of someone who was scared of stalls or steep banks at low altitude and didn't really know how to fly to the limits of his glider.

I agree that it "should not have happened", but the pilot in the front seat had thousands of hours over decades of flying in multiple gliders. He had been a top glider pilot at one time. He put off his retirement from flying for too long.

I'm confident flying after a PTT if there is a place to land, but as Evan notes there are fields where the options after a PTT at 50-300 AGL are limited. I fully subscribe to Evan's emphasis on pre-flight inspections.