RIP Matt Wright (Balleka on YouTube)

At 17:41 12 February 2018, krasw wrote:
maanantai 12. helmikuuta 2018 17.00.06 UTC+2 Michael Opitz
kirjoitti:
At 12:36 10 February 2018, Dave Walsh wrote:
You'd have to live in a very flat area to consider Enstone a
"hill top site": it's enormous and flat.

I wonder if anyone has addressed the "convenience" factor, and
if it might have been a player. I looked at the report and
screen grab pictures, so given the headwind and enormous size
of the airfield, it should have appeared to have been a "no
brainer" to just pull the dive brakes and land straight ahead.

ASW 24 has weakest airbrakes of pretty much any standard class
made after
70's. You might easily get used to doing shallow angle finals, and
suddenly
seeing runway end at steep angle could cause reaction to do a 360
turn.
Just speculating, of course.



I had 2 ASW-24's and flew numerous nationals and one WGC
(Austria) in them. I didn't have any complaints about the airbrakes
in that glider. When I fly my own ship, I make virtually every
landing approach with full dive brakes simulating coming in over
tall trees at an off airport landing site. The ASW-24 gave me no
issues when I did this. From that screen grab, (and the headwind)
it appeared to me that it would have been very easy to put it down
straight ahead with room to spare... Apparently, the accident board
came to the same conclusion too... We will never know why he
chose not to do so.

RO

Fairly early in my racing career (year 3) I made a decision of convenience that came back to haunt me. After a long, low, stressful final glide into Lancaster SC for the regional, I finished and entered the pattern. My brother was crewing, and we had the trailer all hooked up to the car. It would be really convenient to just land short on the taxiway and roll up to the trailer rather than landing on the huge/long runway and rolling up to the first big intersection. Mind you, I was already really tired from 30 minutes of stressful low-level flying and navigating (the days before GPS). Since my decision (if it was really even a decision) came kind of late in the game, I ended up in a high/tight/steep approach. At some point on short final I realized things weren't all that well stabilized. All I remember next was the crunching sound as the gear ripped out and the horizontal stab released from the spring-loaded retainer. Known for ever more by the Charlie Spratt label as the "in flight derigging incident." Since then, I always chose the landing direction and location that makes sense given the conditions and not to save a few minutes of ground handling.

Erik Mann (P3)