Soaring Safety

This discussion brings to mind an episode I had relatively early in my
soaring life. After licensing at Tehachepi in a 2-33, I went to
Crystal to
transition to glass in their Grob 103's. After being cleared to solo I
was flying along the San Gabriel's in an area that had been shown to
me.
The lift was sketchy and I was flying long passes through bands of
weak lift, not very close to the mountain, (I was and still am quite
cowardly). After hitting a strengthening patch of lift through two
passes, I had the brilliant idea to try circling. I made two circles
just like it was any other thermal I had flown and then, between
heartbeats, It all went to schist. I heard a loud bang and instantly i
was no longer flying. the car keys in my shirt pocket were pinned
against the canopy and all the gravel and dust on the floor was
floating in front of me. my angle of bank entering into this was
shallow and I think both wings hit at the same time. If it had been
one wing only, I would have been vertical or inverted faster than I
could have moved the controls to react.
Luckily I was pointed away from the mountain, and recovery was to
simply nose down and pull out. My own personal recovery took
considerably longer. There is no skill in the world that could tame
that kind of sharp edged shear while rock polishing, in my estimation.

Mark Jardini

Sadly, we lost Stew Kissel shortly after I wrote "Don't Smack the
Mountain-101", so we need to add yet another name to the list of
"Mysterious high energy impacts on the side of a mountain". I live by
the rules I stated and so far (35 years & 5000 hours in the Sierras &
Whites) they have kept me from impacting the mountain.
JJ

I remember reading an article, I thought it was Henry Combs, but not
sure, about a technique of rolling inverted deliberately and moving
away from the mountain inverted, when encountering such a gust.

It made sense to me, if you roll authority is less than the strength
of the gust, then don't fight it and even reverse input and let
yourself go inverted. You can then turn away inverted, or at least not
into the mountain. Sounds like a Judo move to me.

Does anyone remember this article or concur with this technique?

Mark Jardini wrote:
This discussion brings to mind an episode I had relatively early in my
soaring life. After licensing at Tehachepi in a 2-33, I went to
Crystal to
transition to glass in their Grob 103's. After being cleared to solo I
was flying along the San Gabriel's in an area that had been shown to
me.
The lift was sketchy and I was flying long passes through bands of
weak lift, not very close to the mountain, (I was and still am quite
cowardly). After hitting a strengthening patch of lift through two
passes, I had the brilliant idea to try circling. I made two circles
just like it was any other thermal I had flown and then, between
heartbeats, It all went to schist.

"Going to schist" When rock polishing goes bad.
Yeah, yeah, I know what your thinking "How gneiss."
;-)


Shawn

On Feb 15, 12:39 pm, Shawn wrote:
Mark Jardini wrote:
This discussion brings to mind an episode I had relatively early in my
soaring life. After licensing at Tehachepi in a 2-33, I went to
Crystal to
transition to glass in their Grob 103's. After being cleared to solo I
was flying along the San Gabriel's in an area that had been shown to
me.
The lift was sketchy and I was flying long passes through bands of
weak lift, not very close to the mountain, (I was and still am quite
cowardly). After hitting a strengthening patch of lift through two
passes, I had the brilliant idea to try circling. I made two circles
just like it was any other thermal I had flown and then, between
heartbeats, It all went to schist.

"Going to schist" When rock polishing goes bad.
Yeah, yeah, I know what your thinking "How gneiss."
;-)

Shawn

Oh, that's just marbelous.

On Feb 14, 2:06*pm, wrote:
In the Henry Combs article, what did happen to Chet Lymon?
He survived and so did/does he confirm his roll control authority was
overpowered?

I checked with my friend who knew Combs and gave me the article, but
so far he hasn't been able to provide an answer to the above question.
I did do a search of the NTSB database and found the report attached
below which says he encountered wind shear. The longer report lists
the wind as 270@13, so I suspect they really meant a thermally induced
wind shear. If that was the case, it wasn't quite the same mechanism
that Combs described but the point is still there. Anytime we fly
close to terrain, life is much more dangerous since there's less time
(no time sometimes) to recover from an anomaly -- be it a wing lifted
(as Combs describes), wind shear that causes a stall, etc.

Hope this helps.

Martin

NTSB Identification: LAX84FA315 .
The docket is stored on NTSB microfiche number 25291.
14 CFR Part 91: General Aviation
Accident occurred Saturday, May 26, 1984 in LLANO, CA
Aircraft: Bölkow PHOEBUS A-1, registration: N7700
Injuries: 1 Serious.
CIRCLING IN LIFT NEAR A HIGH RIDGE THE SAILPLANE ENCOUNTERED WHAT THE
PLT REFERRED TO AS WIND SHEAR. LOSING CONTROL, THE SAILPLANE COLLIDED
WITH A TREE BEFORE IMPACTING THE GROUND.

The National Transportation Safety Board determines the probable
cause(s) of this accident as follows:

WEATHER CONDITION..WINDSHEAR
AIRSPEED(VS)..NOT MAINTAINED..PILOT IN COMMAND

Any chance of getting a link to the source of these
numbers.

I just got the official statistics of Germany for 2007.
20 fatal accidents with German gliders involved
(compared to 10 in 2006).
15 of them abroad, 12 in the French Alps.
------------------



Daniel Scopel
Silent 2 Targa
C-GODY serial 2027
Volez souvent et soyez prudent.
http://pages. videotron. com/dscopel/

On 16 Feb 2008 12:59:45 GMT, Dan Silent
wrote:

Any chance of getting a link to the source of these
numbers.

As far as I know they are not on the web yet, unfortunately - I got
them during an CFI training one week ago on paper only directly from
one of the German fligt safety commisioners.

They are going to be published on bfu-web.de - please send me a
reminder if you cannot find them there within a couple of weeks (the
site is in German only).




Bye
Andreas

At 16:24 16 February 2008, Jj Sinclair wrote:
I actually saw Tom Madigan hit the Whites just east
of Bishop.

I dont think anyone has discussed airspeed in this
thread. My glider has crap airelon authority at 50kts
but at Va it is very good. Isn't safety near rocks
a factor of speed? If you are belting along at a Va
would you not be able to pull up / fly away from the
cliff if you needed to?

Jim

On Feb 16, 9:04*am, Jim White
wrote:
At 16:24 16 February 2008, Jj Sinclair wrote:

I actually saw Tom Madigan hit the Whites just east
of Bishop.

I dont think anyone has discussed airspeed in this
thread. My glider has crap airelon authority at 50kts
but at Va it is very good. Isn't safety near rocks
a factor of speed? If you are belting along at a Va
would you not be able to pull up / fly away from the
cliff if you needed to?

Jim

Sure Jim, but these guys were trying to climb and flying fairly slow
in weak slope lift ond/or trying to work weak thermals. You bring up a
good point though, I never slow down below 65 knots on my first pass
across a piece of ridge that I haven't made at least one pass by to
check for squirrely air.
JJ