On Wednesday, October 21, 2015 at 1:09:00 PM UTC-4, Tango Eight wrote:
On Monday, October 19, 2015 at 9:34:10 PM UTC-4, Karl Striedieck wrote:
The Mt Washington wave camp last week was a great success with plenty of wave flights, one of which (Evan Ludeman) reached 31K.

On another day a couple gliders were in wave when a slug of moisture closed the windows trapping them on top. One turned down wind and rode the undulations to drier air in Maine and landed.

The other attempted to spoiler (drag flap) down through the clouds, which were too thick and low at this point, and chose to bail out. The nylon letdown was successful and the pilot unscathed.

As happy an ending as this was, there is more to be thankful about. When the pilot bailed out his parachute leg straps were not buckled, yet he was able to take the opening shock and descent with his arm pits!

Is this good news or what!! Say hallelujah, say Amen brother!!

KS

We're certainly glad to have Chris back safely on earth. The "Hallelujah!"s were brief and quickly followed by words that might be laundered into "We've gotten by on sheer, dumb luck". There are many well-smitten and furrowed brows in New England today. You see, it wasn't just about Chris.

Only five glider flights departed Gorham the day that Chris bailed out. Only *one* of those flights was according to the basic plan of "take off at Gorham, go soaring, don't get scared, land at Gorham". One managed a nice "take off at Gorham, go soaring, get trapped on top, go land elsewhere" flight that turned out fine, but we hope the pilot is a little bit sheepish for getting up on top in such crummy conditions in the first place. Three gliders were damaged. One abandoned in flight, one damaged in flight, one damaged in an off airport landing. That's some bad odds. We're very happy that no one was injured.

How did this happen?

All of the glider pilots flying that day were (as far as I know) low to medium experience at Mt Wash. All are a little more experienced now!

The more experienced MW wave guys were mostly off doing other things, because (at least according to the forecast and current ADDS weather I looked at that day) it was a pretty crummy day for wave flying. I was at work thinking "Well, at least I'm not missing much!". Others were doing errands in Gorham or amusing themselves with non-aviation related pursuits. One friend -- who is no stranger to challenging weather and has as much MW wave experience as anyone -- heard the tow plane flying while in downtown Gorham and had the thought "What the heck are they doing that for?".

We brief on the myriad of hazards you can find at Mt Washington when the wind blows. The wet wave and what do do about it figure prominently in those briefs. We point out that even on wet wave days the weather will be reliably VFR and usually clear to scattered over Maine (due to adiabatic heating of the airmass as it descends to lower terrain), and that one can glide a *long* way into Maine and to a number of excellent airports from 18000'.

Much to think about til next year.

best regards,

Evan Ludeman / T8

I've been having an interesting off line discussion with several guys about the events of the day... and one guy whose wx assessment is pretty much as good as it gets and was at Gorham airport during the launch tells me -- essentially -- that I've let my imagination fill in a few blanks for me. He maintains that the first four launches, including Chris', were completely safe and reasonable under the prevailing wx conditions of the moment.

He also points out that getting too caught up on the launch / no launch decision might well distract us from more important lessons (such as: how best to deal with a sudden change for the worse in flight).

best,
Evan Ludeman