Scary story about landing on a Lake Tahoe golf course

On Friday, July 31, 2020 at 7:58:09 PM UTC-5, Soartech wrote:
How can you land out on a flight with a glider that is averaging 83 to 1 glide over the entire flight?? (See the OLC link at top.)To me that would be almost like having a motor. Seems like really bad planning.

Gliders have been landing out for as long as they have been flying.
While a great ship offers amazing performance, (not like I own one though),
the inevitable victory belongs to gravity.
Nobody got hurt, Success I say, and a valuable lesson to be shared without criticism.
Respect,
Scott

^^^Yep what he said! ^^^

On Friday, July 31, 2020 at 5:58:09 PM UTC-7, Soartech wrote:
How can you land out on a flight with a glider that is averaging 83 to 1 glide over the entire flight?? (See the OLC link at top.)To me that would be almost like having a motor. Seems like really bad planning.

Never flown out west eh? Long runs at very high L/D are common out here, high and under the clouds. But the day eventually ends and then it is back to reality. There is almost never any lift over Lake Tahoe. The bad planning was entering the Tahoe basin with insufficient altitude to retreat.

I believe the landing was on the 1st and 2nd fairway. These line up along State 267. The other golf course landing we have had was when Gavin Wills landed a DuoDiscus on North Lake Tahoe golf course. That is considerably more open, far fewer trees - but also another 10 miles further across the lake.

On Sat, 01 Aug 2020 08:29:13 -0700, jfitch wrote:

This is slightly off topic, as its about an engine failure in a P-51, but
is well worth watching because the majority of it is concerned with the
pilot talking us through a video shot from the aircraft followed by a
very interesting discussion as he and the interviewer unpick his thought
processes. Here's the link:

https://youtu.be/BBpqvPujZgM

FWIW the URL was posted in a club heads-up about power loss in a tug or
TMG.



--
Martin | martin at
Gregorie | gregorie dot org

Great video, there are couple of questions I would ask though.

1) Why did he not turn much tighter to return to the airfield, one looses much less height in a tight turn that a shallow one? From a tight turn he might have been able to land downwind. Of course I do not know what the winds were, or how feasible is to land P-51 downwind.

2) Why did he cross the highway, surely he could have turned base halfway down the strip and have enough runway to stop.

Whilst I appreciate that he did not do it under the pressure of the situation, I was surprised however, that it did not come up in the discussion.

Cheers

Paul

On Sunday, 2 August 2020 03:05:48 UTC+10, Martin Gregorie wrote:
On Sat, 01 Aug 2020 08:29:13 -0700, jfitch wrote:

This is slightly off topic, as its about an engine failure in a P-51, but
is well worth watching because the majority of it is concerned with the
pilot talking us through a video shot from the aircraft followed by a
very interesting discussion as he and the interviewer unpick his thought
processes. Here's the link:

https://youtu.be/BBpqvPujZgM

FWIW the URL was posted in a club heads-up about power loss in a tug or
TMG.



--
Martin | martin at
Gregorie | gregorie dot org