Glider destroyed by lightning. Granada TV's Savage Planet reconstruction of my accident

10 years ago I was given a gift certificate of a days gliding to celebrate my 30th birthday but a very powerful lightning bolt destroyed the glider that I was a passenger in. This is a reconstruction of the days events. 10 years later I returned to the sky in a similar ASK21 glider with the same instructor that had to bail out with me. We flew together and then I went up again with another instructor and flew an aerobatic loop the loop to celebrate the BIG 40!. The days events were filmed by ITV Anglia and shown on their Tonight program. Please see my other YouTube video. I did this to help raise awareness and vital funds for the Parkinson's Disease Society ( PDS ). So far this has raised over £1500 for the PDS.

ITV kindly let me share this copyright film with you free of royalty charges. They said in an email I received 5th May 2009 "As you have given so much of your time to Granada and Anglia Television, please use the footage free of royalty charges".

My scrapbook of the days events of 10 years ago has photos of the actual wreckage and can be seen on the following web page:- http://sites.google.com/site/thebig40reachfortheskiesagain/

Category:

Sports

Tags:

• Glider
• Destroyed
• Lightning
• Bolt
• Strike
• GQ
• Parachute
• Crash
• Accident
• ASK21
• Parkinsons
• Disease
• Society
• PDS
• Aerobatic
• Loop
• Gliding
• Sail
• Plane
• Graeme
• Cooper
• Survived
• Bail
• Out
• Ripcord
• Bedfordshire
• Granada
• TV
• Savage
• Planet
• ITV

[Pyroman1990]

What was the reg of the glider out of interest?

[LUCKYglider999]

GBP

[Pyroman1990]

Theres a letter missing, itd be G- (something) GBP

[LUCKYglider999]

No sorry I dont have that information. The photos of the wreakage show the letters GBP on the tail, I dont remember any other numbers or letters. The actual wreakage is used on the 999 reconstruction you can see it fall through the trees at 7:08 on the time line and you can see the letters GBP on the tail.

Regards Graeme

[Pyroman1990]

The only thing I found out was it was a 1985 ASK 21. Im a bit of an anorack with details lol

[LUCKYglider999]

I just had a look on the Air accident investigation report and it has states letters BGA 3705 is that any help?. Yes it states the year of the glider as 1985 and yes it was a ASK 21. Hope that helps!

Regards Graeme

[robthebuilder100]

Wow fantastic story. Well done for realising the situation. I see you went up again and raised money for the Parkinsons Disease Society, you are a brave man. Well done

[LUCKYglider999]

We were at about 2000ft, thats high enough for the parachute to open but didnt leave much time by the time we realised what had happened, un buckled our selfs from the seat, stand up, step out of the glider and pull the rip cord.

My 'scrapbook' of the days events tells the story in more detail. See more info for a link to my web page.

[GMac171]

My god, hats off to you both for getting out in time! Any idea how high you were when it struck?