Hang glider performs heavy stall and tucks.

After a flight of 6 hours the pilot asks his instructor permission to do a stall. The instructor advises him not to do any aerobatics now, but to concentrate on a good landing. The pilot wants to do a stall anyway and decides to do so holding the uprights. After pushing hard, the glider puts its nose straight up and stops flying. Due to a lack of airflow the luff lines don't work and the glider tucks immediately. The pilot, still holding his uprights, falls into his sail. This accelerates the tuck and puts extreme load on the glider while it continues turning. Both leading edges are being bent down heavily and one of them breaks. The instructor and his assistant tell the pilot to throw his parachute and so he does. The parachute opens instantly and the pilot lands gently in some low bushes. Apart from a few minor scratches and a sour shoulder he is not injured, but the glider is wrecked.

Technical details:
The pilot: Has over 50 flights and app. 20 hours of air time.
The glider: Tecma Medium in good condition.
The parachute: Metamorfosi Conar 18.
The weather: Reasonably thermal conditions with no extreme turbulence.

About the stall exercise:
This exercise should only be performed in non turbulent conditions at enough altitude. The pilot should have at least the skills to control the glider well in normal conditions. The exercise actually consists of two parts:

1 - The goal of part one is to fly at minimal controllable airspeed (usually just before a stall occurs) and learn the caracteristics of the glider in slow flight. In this exercise the pilot starts with flying horizontally at trim speed and eases out the bottom bar until the glider does not react on lateral input from the pilot anymore.

2 - The goal of part two is to find the actual stall speed and learn to presense it. The pilot again starts with flying horizontally at trim speed and pushes out the bottom bar until the glider stalls (don't push any further). The nose will drop and the bottom bar wants to move backward. The pilot should not resist this movement. In order to pick up speed the glider dives and this dive should be damped out gently by the pilot so the glider assumes its normal flight path.

Category:

Sports

Tags:

• +Single
• surface
• +hang
• glider
• +tuck
• +tucks
• +parachute
• +chute
• +crash
• +stall
• +deep
• stall
• +up
• rights
• +deltavliegen
• +zeilvliegen
• +italie
• +monte
• cucco
• gliding

[NMERider]

Excellent PSA Maarten. I'm gald Frank came out o.k.  I guess he never watched the video of Jason's tumble on his Sensor. Same cause. Only he was spinning on his uprights.

[MaartenSpoek]

@NMERider

Any URL on that video?

[35394691]

Instructor?? I am glad that the poor student is ok.

[MaartenSpoek]

@35394691

The instructor told to do the exercise with the hands on the bottom bar. He's not to blame.. the student did this, coz he thought he was going to get a bigger thrill out of it... well he got that for sure.

But now we can for sure tell the students that it is really dangerous to do a stall on the uprights.

[35394691]

@MaartenSpoek You bet. This is a lesson for many joining the sport.

[35394691]

@ollandezulzburator You are right...the reaction was accurate...I just thought that 6 hours of airtime is too soon to start performing this type of manouver. I am glad all was ok. Cheers to all from Mexico.

[NMERider]

@MaartenSpoek Sending by PM.

[ollandezulzburator]

@35394691

Excellent reaction of the instructor: no panic.

[lltowing2007]

WoW! That was wild !

[acrazedmaniac]

@MaartenSpoek ya...oh shit shit....