Mike Kelsey <kelseym>,
President Buffalo Mountain Flyers, writes:
It was amazing. We had flights on January 1st gaining “First
Flight” awards, and we even had pilots out on December 31st hoping for that last
chance at some duration points at the Heavener flying site in Oklahoma. All the
pilots really enjoyed the format, and I have heard comments from other clubs
around the country that have followed the progress of this “Grass Roots”
competition that they too are hoping to implement a similar competition for
their local area.
Here is how the competition went!
The First Annual Ouachita Mountains Hang Gliding Series was a great success with
14 pilots successful in gaining points throughout the year. The top 4 positions
were hotly contested.
Top honors went to Roy Mahoney, a 32 year veteran flying out of Poteau,
Oklahoma. Flying his new Wills Wing U2, he garnered a total of 3500 points. He
had a 120.5 mile flight for Distance points, had two Pre-defined Goal Tasks
completed, and Duration Task points and Altitude Gain points from two different
mountains. Add on top of that some bonus points for Best Overall Altitude Gain,
Duration, and Distance, and there was no stopping this man on a mission.
2nd place was by a 30 year veteran of the Ouachita Mountains. Mark Stump, flying
an Atos out of Greenbriar, Arkansas, checked in with 2700 points. Mark had 4
Pre-defined Goal task points awarded, two Open Distance Task points awarded from
two different mountains, with an 84.1 mile flight and a 73.6 flight. Mark also
had two sets of Altitude Task points and Duration Task points.
3rd place was awarded to beginner pilot Tim Carls, flying out of Mena, Arkansas
for having the most flights under 1 minute. He was flying a Wills Wing Raven.
Combined with his Work Day Points, he will be honored on the Podium along with
the big dog trophies that go to 1st through 4th place.
4th place goes to a 31 year veteran of the Ouachita Mountains. Mel Hair, flying
out of Tulsa, Oklahoma on his Wills Wing Super Sport, achieved two of the
Pre-defined Goal tasks and two “First Flight (from a site)” Awards.
With the overwhelming success of this first season of the Ouachita Mountains
Hang Glider Series, we will of course be establishing this as an annual event.
For 2006, three additional venues will be added to the competition as well as
some new tasks such as an Out & Return task for the Big 5 Mountains. Emphasis
will be placed on rewarding our Hang 2’s and 3’s as well, and we are hoping to
have our growing number of Paraglider pilots participating as well.
Wills Wing Demo Days in the Spring Once again we will be traveling
to Florida to demo our line of hang gliders. We've planned a big party at
Wallaby Saturday April 15th to celebrate thirty three years in the hang gliding business.
We will also attend the US Nationals, Quest Air and the Pre Worlds to provide
glider delivery, parts and tuning support for the competition pilots. Everyone
is invited. Here is the schedule for April and May:
As there were in fact two accidents to be investigated, I thought
I might give you my statements on both of them, ok!?
Since I wasn’t witness to neither of the accidents, I had to go try match the
available stories with the damage stories that the wreckages tell. I may start
with the second one, since it is the less dramatic one. I’ll send in the other
one tomorrow or the day after (when I had a good chance to talk to Chris Smith
again).
The Ferenc Gruber incident - upon closer inspection:
Ferenc, Balazs, Attila, Steve (Moyes) and I just had a close inspection of the
poor glider that “spent a long night out on the trees” the other day. After I
had been hearing so much from various sources about how that poor glider got
tumbled and smashed to pieces, I was really curious to find out myself.
Although Ferenc initially stated that he flew at full VG, upon close inspection
we quickly found (through a dent mark on the keel that is) that the glider in
that very moment was flown no where near full VG, in fact it was 46% VG.
Ferenc soon corrected his statement to “…well at least I thought it was full VG,
because it felt like…” So much about first hand information, isn’t it?
One might want to bear in mind at this point that a glider with a compensated
dive stick system (like a Litespeed, Climax, Talon, Laminar or Combat) does have
about 1.5 times the pitch pressure actually required from any current testing
institution (e.g. BHGMA, HGMA or DHV), given, the glider is still in the dive
stick configuration it was originally released with (Ferenc said it was.)
According to Ferenc, he then hit an incredibly strong gust that banked him to
the right, and pitched him up so hard that it ripped the base bar right out of
his hands, which made his body swing so far back that his harness hit the keel
behind the rigging attachment point (Bailey-block) and broke the end piece of
the keel there. Though we haven't heard about such an unusual case before, from
a geometric point of view it is still possible, and I’m willing to consider it a
fact.
However, to make it clear: the end piece of the keel is not essential for the
structural integrity of the glider, and since none of the rigging cables showed
any signs of damage either, the glider’s overall geometry in this situation was
still perfectly flyable. But, having lost the base bar out of your hands in such
turbulent air certainly doesn’t help your chances of regaining control over your
glider.
What is quite valuable to learn from this incident now is that, contrary to
common belief, plenty of pitch up and thus plenty of bar pressure is not always
as desirable as it may seem at first. Top pilots have known this for a long
time. While flying at significant speeds (+60 kph) through heavily pumping air
turbulences it will feel far more bumpy and is far more worrying when using only
little VG, as compared to, say, at least ¾ VG! For a simple reason: all the much
desired positive pitch forces will be of very little help to the pilot when they
simply over-power his hand and arm muscles or pitch the glider straight up
despite all your holding on to it (e.g. Comet tumbles in earlier days).
Having finally lost the base bar out of his hands, Ferenc insists, he now was
confronted with even bigger mischief: his harness raiser somehow got stuck
somewhere in the back, so the base bar kept staying out of his reach. With the
CG so far aback, even in smooth air one would sooner or later have to end up in
a whip stall and subsequent tail slide scenario - so going upside down was
pretty much inevitable.
The damage-pattern on the four aluminum dive sticks also supports the idea of
such tail slide (it takes an unusually strong load to buckle that pair of
inboard dive sticks, which only a trailing-edge-forward motion usually provides.
In a conventional forward tumble – if set up too low - you will likely just find
the outboard dive sticks gently giving in, most often even without showing
significant signs of damage!)
Ferenc can’t give a very clear description of the next seconds, just that he
felt some strong G-forces from spiraling for a view moments - then all went calm
and he was then hanging upside down from his glider. He remembers looking
around, feeling worried about throwing his chute instantly as he was still high
(some 2200 meters) and the Cu-Nimbs scarily close. So he waited quite a while on
his way down to finally deploy at about 500 meters. The following decent was
unexpectedly smooth and so was the touchdown in the trees.
The rest is history, and was well covered by the media. Ferenc luckily didn’t
have a scratch, and the damage on the glider up to this stage was still very
subtle: Four dive sticks and a keel would have to be replaced, not one bolt was
bent, the sail was unharmed.
According to Attila, the rescue team unfortunately didn’t treat the poor glider
half as careful as poor Ferenc. They managed to man-handle the sail quite well
on its 20 meter descent down to the ground – it is pretty much a write off now.
So much for the technical side of the whole event.
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