Kawa rough landing?

Dear friends,

while the 3rd FAI 13.5m WGC still has only 2 days to go, I must say I totally sympathize with Sebastian Kawa's unfortunate outlanding. As part of the organizing activities, of course we provided an official TP file which includes a database of airports, airstrips and recommended outlanding fields. Compared to Rieti, where reliable outlanding fields are distributed over the whole contest area albeit here and there there are localized regions where one should avoid getting low, Pavullo and the Norther Appennines offer fewer fields, most of which are require an uphill approach. However, this is where we have hosted some Juniors' camps and national training weeks. In September 2018, a training competition "Pavullo Glide" has been completed satisfactorily.

On the given day, take-offs were delayed till after about 1.30 p.m. due to scheduled fighter-jets training activity over the airport of Pavullo. They then performed 3 low passes on the following day during the official Opening Ceremony.

As far as we know, there were no storms or heavy weather phenomena at the time of the outlanding. The assigned training task was conservative.

4 Italian members of the organization and a second Polish pilot all went to help with the retrieve. We, at the home base, were reassured that Sebastian was in good health although reporting some back pain. He then left the competition site without further contacts.

Sebastian performed a self-launch with no problems. It has been said by some of the people on the ground, and I don't know if the information is accurate, that the limit-switch failed to provide the necessary "full deployment" contact to allow engine starting. I don't know if the GP sailplane provides any bypass procedure.

The competition is going on. Italian Stefano Ghiorzo is leading with the Diana VS FES 13.5m, in second position there's German Uli Schwenk with the MiniLak and no auxiliary power system (pure glider). With two days to go, the results are still very open.

Here are 2 links to the TP database.

cheers,
Aldo Cernezzi
competition director of the 3rd FAI 13.5 WGC


https://www.soaringspot.com/en_gb/ii...2019/downloads

http://soaringweb.org/TP/Pavullo

The airfield I learned to fly at had a significant slope on one approach, the trick was to touch down just before the slope, on the close to level ground.
On several occasions whilst training, I touched down on the slope, it was tricky to handle, but will stand me in good stead should the situation arise.
As with all potential emergencies, one should try and predict them, and have a plan to deal with such an ocourance.
Even fields that look fine from the air can have a significant slope that is difficult to pick from the air.

It sure gets tiring listening to all the second guessing and after the fact 20/20 hindsight. The fact is **** happens to all of us irreguardless of general experience level. The experience that really counts is the experience directly related to the type of accident. In this case it is experience at off airport landings.

I would venture to guess that the great majority of guys flying higher performance modern machines (including some of the top ranked pulots) have very little if any experience with setting them down on marginal fields. The skill levels in off field landings are not there anymore simply because it is a realitively rare occurance these days with the higher performance birds and the different flying/contest mentality that exists today.

On Monday, September 16, 2019 at 6:53:04 PM UTC-4, wrote:
...The skill levels in off field landings are not there anymore simply
because it is a realitively rare occurance these days with the higher
performance birds and the different flying/contest mentality that exists
today.

That is incorrect for non-USA competition flying, where tasks and
scoring mean frequent outlandings. Check out the recent world Juniors
for example...