GLIDING INTERNATIONAL -- RESEARCH

Hi Ben, true, the guy doing his first few off field landings is at greater risk. But the point being, the guy who has been doing alot of recent off field landings now has a body of experience to draw from when confronted with his next one. The guy who is just a local flier, is not as 1. Tuned up to accessing a field etc and 2. Doesnt have any experience to draw from.

On Sunday, November 10, 2019 at 6:07:47 AM UTC-5, wrote:
Hi Ben, true, the guy doing his first few off field landings is at greater risk. But the point being, the guy who has been doing alot of recent off field landings now has a body of experience to draw from when confronted with his next one. The guy who is just a local flier, is not as 1. Tuned up to accessing a field etc and 2. Doesnt have any experience to draw from.

Agree, but it seems like a bit of a "Catch-22" until we have reliable, long-distance sustainer engines and/or reliable self-launching gliders, I just don't see how we can get from "point A" (no off-field landing experience) to "point B" (lots of off-field landing experience) without becoming an accident statistic (i.e. an accident-waiting-to-happen that consequently happened).

Condor2 with Oculus Rift VR (Virtual Reality - which I have and use almost daily) helps with off-field landing procedures, but the landscape scenery is not yet detailed enough to show boulders, fences, haystacks, potholes, etc., so it's not all that valuable for this purpose.

I suppose the FAA could require us all to take off-field landing instruction in motor gliders, as some high-time glider instructors have suggested before, but that would add a lot to the cost of a glider rating. Does the accident rate warrant that?

Yes Charles there is a little catch 22 involved but it can be minimized. Getting some instr in motorglider is not really necessary. Any power plane will do. Really the essential skill involved is field selection and evaluation. Flying in a power plane at say 1500 ft agl will give a guy the perspective he will be seeing when confronted with an outlanding. A guy can get experience making a field selection and evaluation and simulated approach then both go up and relook it over to cat h what he might have missed in an actual landing and/or then drive over there and apraise that same field from the ground. Thats what an old timer did with me when I was a kid preparing for mu first xc.

Additionally, a guy can do the same excercise on every glider flight he makes. While even thermaling at height a guy can look and see where he thinks he maybe could put her down then later take a closer look at a google earth shot of that same field and zoom in to whatever altitude he wants to check it out. While not being able to see rocks in the field, the google earth shot does show the hedge rows many of the wires, their support poles and the field slope. This is a great and pain free excercise to help a guy on off field decision making.
Dan

Maybe this is why most cross country pilots started with hang gliders. In a hang glider almost every cross country flight end with an off field landing. One must be totally comfortable with the idea of off field landing to be able to fly cross country safely.

Ramy

I think its a reach to say “ most xc fliers started with hang gliders�. Out of about 40 guys I know who fly xc on a regular basis, theres only one who did any hang glided. But your point about being comfortable with out field landings is spot on.

On Sunday, November 10, 2019 at 1:55:11 PM UTC-8, Ramy wrote:
Maybe this is why most cross country pilots started with hang gliders. In a hang glider almost every cross country flight end with an off field landing. One must be totally comfortable with the idea of off field landing to be able to fly cross country safely.

Ramy

Big difference though, between an off field landing in a hang glider and one in a sailplane as you know. Some of the newer hang gliders are a little hotter landing, but back in the day - if necessary - a tree landing in a hang glider was considered a landing, not a crash. You can put even a high aspect Rogallo into a very small and confined space in relative safety. A 21m sailplane, not so much.

Out west, even an airfield landing can be treacherous: there may be berm on the sides, the sage may have grown 4' tall since you walked it last, the snow stakes might be set up for a Cessna or small span power plane.

No doubt a hang glider can land in much more restricted area. But the idea is that you don’t have this umbilical cord from day one. At least this is how I felt. The longer you stay connected to your airfield (or couple airfields in the area) the harder it gets to get comfortable to cut the umbilical cord. You need to get comfortable flying cross country and land out from early on. (But never too comfortable which may turn into complacency).

Ramy

FFS most of the rest of the world uses a tried and tested way of
training for off airport landings - the use of a motorglider -why do you
North Americans have to do everything the hard way.........

Why? Because we can and we always do things our independent way lol.

EU uses motorgliders because GA aviation is only for the very rich over there and your not gonna find any tom-dick-harry with a light plane, only clubs, rick guys and partnerships.

Here in North America for $150 bucks or a bbq lunch for a friend with a plane, a guy can spend an hour up in the air scouting fields and simulating off field approaches. It being a motor glider is not essential.