On 6/15/2013 7:03 AM, Walt Connelly wrote:
I found this on YouTube and I would be more interested in what the crowd
on Aviation Banter/Soaring had to say. I am impressed that this
individual would post his video, has to be a bit embarrassing. Lots of
second guessing and backseat flying in the comments but I think he did
the right thing. What say you, far more experienced glider pilots?

Walt

https://www.youtube.com/watch?featur...v=r0I75OZmA-0#!

Oh boy. This one should bring out the second guessers! (How do you separate a
2nd-guesser from a "There but for the grace of God..." response?)

I never had that happen to me, though I thought about it a LOT...maybe that's
why it never happened (dry chuckle)... In any event, "Fly the stinkin'
airplane!" was always Right Up There in my post-emergency plans. Takeoff
roll/immediate-post-lift-off (i.e. safe to land straight ahead) emergencies
always warranted their own categories of thought, since the release/land NOW
option was readily at hand, and hitting things horizontally is generally
better than the alternative (hard to do at the point in time the canopy opened
in this video).

IN GENERAL, my thinking tended toward pulling the plug so's to avoid
continuing to gain energy. I did so once (maybe more times, though only this
event springs immediately to mind) when I had a suspicion my tail dolly was
still on (it was)...minimize the embarrassment, and, the risk I felt was the
prudent thing to do. I didn't do it one time when I lost all electrics (one
audio vario!) on the takeoff roll...cheapness won out. Finished a diamond
goal/gold distance fun-contest flight in that case (most didn't).

Having flown a 1-34 exactly twice, an hour each flight and long ago, at this
point in time I *think* I'd have opted to pull the plug, based on the video
picture. That said, the flight was concluded safely, and Joe PIC's
post-opening thought processes didn't seem obviously, egregiously, flawed to
me. I've no doubt he learned many useful things from the incident...good on
him...and kudos for sharing the "learning opportunity" with the rest of the
interested folks of the world.

Bob W.