Use of drag chutes

The accidents in Namibia which totaled gliders and claimed a life deserve more respect than that offered by our friend "Fred Drift".
Hey, it's fun to land with a drag chute. I regret never trying ASW17B 15 meter drag chute landings. At 20m it was huge fun.
Jim

Have done a bunch of landings with the tail chute in my 301 Libelle. Deploy on high downwind abeam intended touchdown point. Requires quite the nose down attitude to maintain airspeed. Modulate glide path with divebrakes. Be ready to jettison if coming up short. Yep, it's fun.

I tried to use the tail chute twice in my H-301 Libelle. First time was during an off field landing, I pulled the chute and stuffed the nose down...........next thing I knew I was scooting through the weeds doing 80. The chute hadn't deployed! Next time I gave it a try was a landing at Winnemucca, Nv. I popped the chute on down-wind and soon found I was going to be way short, so I pulled the jettison handle..............you guessed it, it didn't jettison! I made the runway, but was a half mile from my desired stopping point. The chute worked fine on the ground, before and after both incidents. My conclusion, unreliable and not necessary in a ship that had landing flaps and dive brakes.
FWIW,
JJ

At 14:46 07 February 2016, wrote:
I tried to use the tail chute twice in my H-301 Libelle. First time
was
dur=
ing an off field landing, I pulled the chute and stuffed the nose
down.....=
......next thing I knew I was scooting through the weeds doing 80.
The
chute=
hadn't deployed! Next time I gave it a try was a landing at
Winnemucca,
N=
v. I popped the chute on down-wind and soon found I was going
to be way
sho=
rt, so I pulled the jettison handle..............you guessed it, it
didn't
=
jettison! I made the runway, but was a half mile from my desired
stopping
p=
oint. The chute worked fine on the ground, before and after both
incidents.=
My conclusion, unreliable and not necessary in a ship that had
landing
fla=
ps and dive brakes.
FWIW,
JJ

I had a Slingsby Kestrel which had flaps, 2 lots and airbrakes. The
best that could be said about the airbrakes is they made a nice
noise. It also had a tail parachute which was very effective, if it
deployed. The tail parachute was in a shaped box on the bottom of
the rudder. The technique was to select the deployment and then
waggle the rudder from side to side to encourage it to deploy. This
worked most of the time. I used to start an approach where I
intended to use the parachute from 600ft. If it did not deploy I had
enough height to do a 360 deg turn on finals to loose the height.

The ASW17B (17045) has a belly chute. One day Mark Grubb and I took turns landing it with the chute. We intentionally packed it with less care each time, and it always deployed. This was a fun test prior to Mark's rebuild of the ASW12.
The technique was pull at 600'AGL on short final. Woomph! Nose down, pull the double-surface airbrakes out fully. Laughter! Gently ease back on the stick just before your feet hit the runway. Normal touchdown. As it was a paved runway, we jettisoned the chute shortly after touchdown to reduce wear on the cover attached to the crown of the chute. The loss of drag is quite apparent.
Unfortunately we lost the piece of the belly (swivel clip failure) off the end of the runway before trying the drag chute at 15m span.
The 17B has a lot of handles at the bottom of the panel. Best not to adjust the pedals without looking at the handle.
Jim

Originally Posted by

I tried to use the tail chute twice in my H-301 Libelle. First time was during an off field landing, I pulled the chute and stuffed the nose down...........next thing I knew I was scooting through the weeds doing 80. The chute hadn't deployed! Next time I gave it a try was a landing at Winnemucca, Nv. I popped the chute on down-wind and soon found I was going to be way short, so I pulled the jettison handle..............you guessed it, it didn't jettison! I made the runway, but was a half mile from my desired stopping point. The chute worked fine on the ground, before and after both incidents. My conclusion, unreliable and not necessary in a ship that had landing flaps and dive brakes.
FWIW,
JJ

I used the Janus chute on most landings to be really familiar with it's characteristics/quirks before I ever got to use it in an outlanding situation.

I only ever suffered 2 failures and both were at my home field. Once I ran the lever forward through the detent and inadvertently jettisoned it lol, and the second time was deploying it while dumping water and it not surprisingly it didn't inflate properly. Both good lessons learnt cheaply

:-) Colin

On Sunday, February 7, 2016 at 9:46:34 AM UTC-5, wrote:
I tried to use the tail chute twice in my H-301 Libelle. First time was during an off field landing, I pulled the chute and stuffed the nose down...........next thing I knew I was scooting through the weeds doing 80. The chute hadn't deployed! Next time I gave it a try was a landing at Winnemucca, Nv. I popped the chute on down-wind and soon found I was going to be way short, so I pulled the jettison handle..............you guessed it, it didn't jettison! I made the runway, but was a half mile from my desired stopping point. The chute worked fine on the ground, before and after both incidents. My conclusion, unreliable and not necessary in a ship that had landing flaps and dive brakes.
FWIW,
JJ

JJ - I object to your comment 'unreliable and not necessary'! Tail-chutes become unreliable if they are being neglected, i.e. hardly used, never allowed to dry/air out and if the operating mechanisms are not maintained! I flew an Open Cirrus and a H101 Salto with chutes and never had any malfunctions of any kind. I wished my H301 had one but the first owner didn't order it from the factory.
Uli
AS

On Monday, February 8, 2016 at 11:58:28 AM UTC-6, AS wrote:
On Sunday, February 7, 2016 at 9:46:34 AM UTC-5, wrote:
I tried to use the tail chute twice in my H-301 Libelle. First time was during an off field landing, I pulled the chute and stuffed the nose down...........next thing I knew I was scooting through the weeds doing 80. The chute hadn't deployed! Next time I gave it a try was a landing at Winnemucca, Nv. I popped the chute on down-wind and soon found I was going to be way short, so I pulled the jettison handle..............you guessed it, it didn't jettison! I made the runway, but was a half mile from my desired stopping point. The chute worked fine on the ground, before and after both incidents. My conclusion, unreliable and not necessary in a ship that had landing flaps and dive brakes.
FWIW,
JJ

JJ - I object to your comment 'unreliable and not necessary'! Tail-chutes become unreliable if they are being neglected, i.e. hardly used, never allowed to dry/air out and if the operating mechanisms are not maintained! I flew an Open Cirrus and a H101 Salto with chutes and never had any malfunctions of any kind. I wished my H301 had one but the first owner didn't order it from the factory.
Uli
AS

Hi Uli,

I have found my tailchute to be very reliable. Only two failures in many deployment, both due to my own negligence. I had an uncommanded in-flight deployment due to my inadvertently pulling on the lanyard when removing the instrument panel and forgetting to recheck the security of the shoe during the pre-flight inspection. Luckily, it deployed after I got off tow and was at altitude. Could have been bad on tow. The other was a failure of the 'chute to inflate completely. I had packed it badly and it just came out in a ball and stayed that way. Kept the pattern close in and carried a little extra speed into the flair in case the darned thing decided to open fully.

On Sunday, February 7, 2016 at 9:46:34 AM UTC-5, wrote:
I tried to use the tail chute twice in my H-301 Libelle. First time was during an off field landing, I pulled the chute and stuffed the nose down...........next thing I knew I was scooting through the weeds doing 80. The chute hadn't deployed! Next time I gave it a try was a landing at Winnemucca, Nv. I popped the chute on down-wind and soon found I was going to be way short, so I pulled the jettison handle..............you guessed it, it didn't jettison! I made the runway, but was a half mile from my desired stopping point. The chute worked fine on the ground, before and after both incidents. My conclusion, unreliable and not necessary in a ship that had landing flaps and dive brakes.
FWIW,
JJ

One can feel the chute deploying before it is fully effective and have several seconds to lower the nose as this is going on. Keep a few knots extra airspeed and you have no need to push the nose down prior to confirmation of deployment.

After Wil Schuemann bought an ASW 12 (no dive brakes), he set about determining why the drag chute didn't always deploy. He mounted a high-speed film camera and aimed it at the rudder. IIRC, if the rear of the lower rudder housing in which the chute was stored dropped down first, it fell away from the rudder and the chute deployed normally. Sometimes the front of the housing dropped slightly first, jamming the whole assembly. Or maybe it was vice versa. Anyway, he made some modifications that helped insure it dropped the same way every time. Then he added a second drag chute that deployed from the belly. Watching him land using the two chutes was pretty inspiring.

Chip Bearden