On Wednesday, April 22, 2015 at 5:52:42 AM UTC-7, Bob Pasker wrote:
This came from the SoarNV mailing list:

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On Easter Sunday, Bob Spielman, known as Chukar, was caught in clouds on a very lively wave day and had to bail out of his wingless glider. He visited us today. He is in good spirits and flying once again. He has his 1-26 and his Sparrow Hawk to keep him in the sky.

This is his first person account of what happened, reprinted here with his permission.

Oh, and we now call him Lucky Chukar.

Here is his account:



to my friends
i was going to fly my biggest flight in my ASW 27 today, aiming for 12 hours. i took off at minden at 7:30
and went north to Stead and turned back for clouds ad flew south to Mammoth and then went north almost to Susanville.
it was slow and as i was passing over Reno i went between 2 clouds which filled in suddenly. I should have had a neat attitude indicater like Gordo has and i tried to fly my Garmin but it was so rough that things went to hell in a hurry.
I was IFR at 14000' and i felt a stall and then the airspeed increased fast thru 160k and i heard 2 pops and the canopy broke
i shortly came out the bottom of the clouds in a spin at maybe 9-10000' and tried to break the spin but it didn't work and i looked and saw the left wing wasn't there so i knew that wouldn't work.
I unlocked the emerg canopy release, open my harness and went over the side. i saw stuff flying thru the air (2 nanos,handheld radio. lunch etc) and couln't find my ripcord and thought it was gone but looked lower and found it and pulled it and it wasn't a very long ride down and i saw the glider fuselage going down below me.
i thought i was going to land on the CIRCUS CIRCUS roof but missed it an then i landed on the st mary hospital
roof but hoped my chute would snag the light pole. i hit the light and the chute snagged it and i ended up 10'
in the air. a reno cop pushed up on my feet so i could release my chute and slide down the pole.
HOW LUCKY I WAS.

I didn't go to the hospital but my son and daughter in law doctor told me i had to and they found a broken collar bone
and my right lung was collapsed so they had that fixed in an hour by 2 doctors who are in our air guard hospital.

i lost my phone so no service.

LUCKY CHUKAR
that ASW 27 was a beautiful glider.


There is more to this story if you look at the GPS track that was being posted by SSA Tracker page. The glider covered over 70 km going down wind to avoid the closed gap to over the Dog Skins and then was penetrating upwind when the problem occurred. The canopy was still attached to the glider when it landed in a parking lot, so the emergency release did not eject the canopy. The second wing was finally found close by, it went through a roof and was found inside a building. Good thing none of these pieces hurt someone on the ground.

All the discussion about this accident has over shadowed the accomplishment of Jim Payne who was well prepared and did a amazing flight at just under 3000km on the same day. I believe it is really important to focus on how to prepare and execute a flight in these strong wave conditions, rather than dwell on how lucky one was to survive. Given most of the facts, surviving was pure luck being snagged 10 ft off the ground by a light pole at the edge of a 5 story building.

BG