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wlfk
Veteran
Location: uk
| Thanks, Proline. Incidentally, I didn't mean to be too argumentative as I know there's some truth in the statement. But at the same time it's something I've been ruminating about for years.
I first started to hear this when I was a member of the local hang-gliding club. Whenever someone hurt themselves we would have a 'safety report' analysing everything that had led up to the crash. There was inevitably a list of 2-3 factors that had contributed to each accident. It was an excellent exercise and in many ways very healthy. But there was also something about it that bothered me.
In some way, people felt that by understanding the risks of what they were doing, they were mastering them. It's hard to express exactly what I mean, but it was providing some form of 'illusion of control' that people were using as a crutch to enable them to carry on flying. Cognitively, we all knew that what we were doing was dangerous. But I think the majority of us were living in some degree of denial and in some way the safety reports contributed to this.
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On my first solo, I was slope soaring with the hill on my left when a thermal picked up my outside (right) wing and turned me so I was flying directly towards the slope. I applied full weight shift to turn right but there was no reaction. The side of the hill was starting to get closer very fast, yet the 'textbook' approach was to pull on extra speed, which increases the responsiveness of the glider. To give some indication of how alarming this was, my flying speed was probably just over 20mph, with a 15-20mph tailwind. After pulling the nose down to gain speed, my airspeed was probably 30-35mph, whilst only a few hundred yards out from the hillside.
I knew what was happening with the thermal, so I figured I had two possible courses of action. One was to hope that the glider would be willing to turn right now that it had extra airspeed. The second possibility was to try to turn left and do an inside turn - very much forbidden but I still think it would have been a reasonable course of action given my glider's apparent reluctance to turn right. In the event I decided to turn right, and it worked. Just. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that I was only a few seconds away from a major accident. Certainly there wasn't enough time to try anything else. The whole thing lasted only a few seconds.
On the way down to land I realised two things: one was that I had at least a smidgeon of 'the right stuff'*. Hitting the accelerator when I was already rushing straight for the hill was very counter-intuitive. Yet I'd done exactly the right thing in a calm and reasoned manner. My other thought was that if anything had gone wrong, I would have been lambasted in the club safety report. And sure enough, when I landed I got a rollocking from my white-faced instructor for having started to do what appeared to be an inside turn towards the hill. Against strict instructions. Had I died - and this is not being melodramatic - I would have been remembered as a nice guy, but perhaps not quite true pilot material. Distressing as this thought is, I wouldn't feel resentful anyone for having thought it: how else could we carry on?
K
* Hang glider pilots are all frustrated fighter pilots, apart from the lucky few who fly fighter jets on weekdays.
A bit like a kite, but 500 times more expensive |
| 10-17-2007 01:40 AM | | | |
