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Oz Report

Volume 7, Number 267
8 am, Monday, October 13 2003

https://OzReport.com
"Toto, I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore."
Mon, Oct 13 2003, 1:00:01 pm EDT

to Table of Contentsto next topic Dalby

photo|weather|William "Billo" Olive|William Olive

photo|weather|William "Billo" Olive|William Olive

william olive «william.olive» writes:

The internet cafe in Dalby kept bankers hours only, making uploading any results to the web pretty near impossible real time.  But, I now have the 1st two rounds and some photos on the NHGC website at www.nhgc.asn.au and the final results and some more pics will be up in a day or so. We ended up with 4 flying days in the comp, and 1 was poor, 2 were good, one excellent.  Oz weather this season is predicted to be wetter than normal, although what this may mean for comps remains to be seen.

Discuss "Dalby" at the Oz Report forum   link»

Mon, Oct 13 2003, 1:00:02 pm EDT

to Table of Contentsto next topic Aerotow Speed Gliding

weather

Paolo de Nicola «paolo_denicola» writes:

Last month, at the Coupe Icare in St Hilaire de Touvet, France, they've demoed a kind of speed gliding.  Pilots were aerotowed from the plateau in St Hilaire (not far from the normal launch) all the way to the top of the mountain (Dent de Crolles).

It was 6pm and they were indeed people to watch it (well, they were people anyway because the Coupe Icare is usually packed and the weather was gorgeous).

Interesting experiment, although personally I don't think speed gliding is the way to go to promote our sport.  They managed to make even golf (!) and billiard (!!) interesting on TV, there must be a way to show XC flying!

 

In the picture the French champion Antoine Boisseiler is flying over his home town.

Discuss "Aerotow Speed Gliding" at the Oz Report forum   link»

Mon, Oct 13 2003, 1:00:03 pm EDT

to Table of Contentsto next topic Australian Grasslands

Jeff Rickard|photo

Jeff Rickard «Jeff.Rickard» writes:

Photos taken from paddocks between Deniliquin and Hay (location of the two big Australian tow comps) last weekend.  Somewhat different from last season.

 

 Discuss grass in the paddocks at OzReport.com/forum/phpBB2

Discuss "Australian Grasslands" at the Oz Report forum   link»

to Table of Contentsto next topic Tom on his tumble

Mon, Oct 13 2003, 5:00:04 pm GMT

André Wolfe|Betinho Schmitz|Claudia Mejia|Corinna Schwiegershausen|Gerolf Heinrichs|Jon "Jonny" Durand jnr|Lukas Etz|Manfred Ruhmer|Mike Barber|Richard Walbec|sailplane|Thomas "Tom/Tomas" Weissenberger|weather

Thomas Weissenberger «tomtom» writes:

I would like to report from my first tumble which happened at the worlds in Brasilia at Task 7, 23 August 2003.

My glider: Litespeed S 4, Moyes
Harness: Matrix Race, Moyes
Parachute: Conar 16, Metamorfosi

There were three circumstances dominating my tumble:

a) Vertical wind shear

b) Horizontal wind shear

c) Strong thermal activity

First, I want to explain some cases of thermal activities during the tasks in Brasil and mention some pilots’ experiences with it.

The thermal: In the first week of the Worlds pilots were reporting strange and unexpectedly rough turbulence.  While flying in a calm 2 meter/s thermal with loose VG suddenly, a pilot reported that the glider was turned vertical and diving straight down.  The glider sped up very quickly and after a long dive it recovered.  In anther case this unintentional flight maneuver was accomplished after leaving a thermal but with already tightened VG. In this case the glider took even longer to recover.  Pilots who were reporting these types of incidents include Manfred Ruhmer, Gerolf Heinrichs, Andre Wolf and Mario Alonzi.

This kind of turbulence is due to a very small friction zone between the rising and the falling air at the thermal’s edge.  It seemed that the rising air flows right next to the sinking air without any crumple zone in between.  In the cases reported the hang glider was flying out of the thermal’s core directly into sinking air at the thermal’s edge.  The nose was the first part of the glider which was pushed down by sinking air while the outer sail of the wings was still lifted up. This caused a fast and unexpected nose dive.  The stronger the thermal the stronger this vertical wind shear (point a).

Day 7: As a member of the pilots’ task committee together with Betinho Schmitz and Richard Walbec we decided to set a 200 km triangle at task 7. The day before was already very good with a 150 km task and more than 60 pilots in goal.  This day looked even better and we thought it would be the best day of the Worlds.  There was forecast a high cloud base at 3000 meters with 10-15 knots wind from NW, wind at ground with 10 knots from SE. The wind at lower level was blowing at a 180° different direction than the wind at higher level which caused a strong wind shear at 2000 meters QNH (point b).

The tumble: I just made the first turnpoint which was also the center of a 5 km start cylinder radius.  I was flying together with Mike Barber and Franz Herman.  At an altitude of 2100 m QNH I was looking for a thermal under a beautiful cloud.  I opened the rope to half VG and was searching for the thermal using a right turn.  The lift was not good and I turned left to look for better lift still with half VG. At this moment Mike Barber joined me and he also turned left next to me.

After a quarter of the turn I hit very strong lift at 8 meters per second (point c). The nose of the glider was pushed up in a very steep angle and I pulled the bar to my chest.  My body was not enough weight to change the angle of attack.  The glider remained in this position going up and kept losing speed.  It got very quiet around me with no wind sound at all.  At this moment I did not think about letting go of the VG. I just wanted to hold and pull the bar in.

At no speed the glider stalled and because of the left turn my left wing went down first.  At this moment I knew it is serious now.  I tightened my hands on the bar which was still pulled.  The whole glider was falling out of the thermal vertically and I got this uncomfortable push from the back which started a roll forward.  The glider went down left wing first and with a vertical left spin.  It was something between a roll and a dive.

The glider was speeding up very fast, my body became weightless and I lost tension on the harness riser.  I got a free fall feeling in my stomach and I saw the glider’s nose coming in more and more.  Mike Barber who was still next to me saw the incident and reported later that the glider was going down in a vertical left spin about 150 m.

During this very fast free fall I still had no sound in my ears which was the strangest experience to me and I remember best!  All the air around was sinking with me and no air stream could build up on the wings profile.  In this vacuum the rotation around the Y-wings-axis kept going and the nose of the glider kept coming closer to me. Maybe my body was also coming closer to the keel.  I had the feeling that the position of the glider was already negative.

In the very next moment I felt a wind stream on my face and immediately the glider tumbled over the left wing.  It was a very fast somersault and in the same moment both carbon uprights broke.  The centrifugal force threw me to the back on the back keel.  This impact and the power from the wings on the spars broke the front keel right under the center section.

My rotation stopped and for a short moment I saw the glider flying up-side-down very slow.  Then it went into a right spin and rolled over into a "normal" flying position.  I ended up under the glider trying to get my orientation back.  When I saw the ground under me and the under surface above me I was looking for my chute.  I do not remember if the base bar got smashed out of my hands or if I let go because of not having a complete A-frame anymore.

The chute opening: I knew that I was still high above the ground (1000 meters) and I took my time to throw the chute well.  I looked at the handle, took it with my right hand and threw it to the back of the right side.  I watched the yellow bag very carefully while falling away.  I saw the cord opening first getting longer and longer.  When the cord was fully straightened the chute opened immediately.  I did not feel a strong push when the chute opened.  I was hanging onto the chute in an upright position while the glider was hanging under me on my riser.  The back keel was vertical beside me and the nose of the glider was showing down.

The glider: From the glider’s back I could look over both wings which were in beautiful condition.  None of the leading edges were broken and I had no fast spin while going down.  The glider was swinging vertical from the left to the right wing.  It wanted to speed up and therefore my sink rate was quite fast.  I looked down to the ground and I saw that I was going to land in the big forest.  This fact made me optimistic.  I looked up quite often to check my opened chute.  It took a couple of minutes to come down.

The landing: I knew that I was coming down fast and that I had to decrease my speed for landing.  30 m above the ground I took the end of the back keel with both hands and pushed it down.  The nose of the glider was rising up like expected and the glider went horizontal.  It helped a lot to slow down and in the next moment the glider hit the bushes.  It was a very dense forest with two meter high bushes.  Both wings ended up on the trees while I was falling on the ground quite soft in my opened harness.

After landing I was very calm and relaxed happy of being unhurt.  I got out of the harness and checked the sail of the glider which had no single damage b,ut I had lost my instrument pod with the Vario and GPS.  Suddenly I saw a glider over me circling down.  It was Kazuyuki Hirabayashi from Japan.  He came pretty close over me, made a GPS mark and landed 600 m away next to the main street with Ron Ritchardson from England and Corina Schwiegershausen from Germany (not in the comp). In the very dense forest I could not see their landings but I could hear cars from the street driving by.

I called our driver Claudia Mejia and started walking to the street after marking my landing place with my spare GPS.  In the mean time Hirabayashi, his driver and Ron were walking to me, but we did not meet in this jungle.  After ten minutes I reached the street and I saw already some retrieve cars parked 100m away.  After several hugs I got a cold beer pressed in my hand and we had a little party at the side of the street.

The day after: I was feeling fine and I wanted to fly again as soon as possible.  For me the best way to get over things is to go flying.  With the spare glider of Gerolf Heinrichs I was set up and ready at launch the very next day.  My harness got ready with a packed chute from Matthew Tehira from the Moyes staff and a new carbon back plate of a spare Moyes harness.  The day was called due to thunder storms.  Next day, a rest day, we fixed my glider with a new keel, a Zoom A-frame and new wires.  By task eight I was flying again with my own glider and I could finish the Worlds as a team world champion.

The conclusion:

a) I do not want to tumble again!

b) My next uprights will be strong ones.  After having a closer look at my broken and split carbon uprights I could see that they were made way too fragile.  If they would not have broken I would have had a chance to recover.

c) My next Moyes harness will have two chutes.

d) In strong conditions I will not thermal with half VG anymore.  It is not necessary like in weak conditions.

e) There are kinds of turbulences which can take a hang glider into a flying position from which it cannot recover.  In critical situations the hook-in-weight of the pilot could not be enough energy to match against strong turbulent air masses.  I would not deny of having set my sprogs low but it was not the main reason of my tumble.  In such an immense down draft I would have went over with any glider.  As a sailplane pilot I was aware of this risk since I began hang gliding.  This is also the reason why I can handle it to go on flying.

I do not know about an average value of monthly tumbles of hang gliders around the world, but in the last weeks I heard about one tumble after the other.  On the 14th of September Frederico Bausone from the Italian national team went over with his Laminar 13 in Italy.  Just four days later a young Italian pilot tumbled with his La Moyette Topless glider at the Italian Nationals.  Both accidents happened at very turbulent conditions.  The pilots could open their chutes and they were unhurt.

Two days later there was a chute opening in the USA and at the 30th of September a Climax tumbled in Australia.  I was not informed about details of these accidents nor about the weather conditions and what happened to the pilots.

Now the main question for me is not what kind of glider or sprogs setting each pilot had but rather where are the weather determining limits to fly safely with hang gliders?

Thanks to:

- Ron Ritchardson, Kazuyuki Hirabayashi and Corina Schwiegershausen for landing and helping first!  I do hope Ron will recover after his accident soon.

- Vicki, Steve, Gerolf, Matt, Kraig, Jonny and Attila for helping me: "gettin back to business"!

- Claudia Mejia from the Austrian team, Doc and Didier from the French team, Haroldo and Claudia from the comp organisation, Teo and Ecki from the German team for sharing my best beer!  The party was good out there!

- Luzinho Niemeyer and Lukas Etz for lending me their instruments!

- Lukas Bader for packing my chute!

- Bill and Molly for making the atmosphere bloody good everyday from breakfast till dinner!

(editor’s note: While in New York I heard a second hand report on the placement of Tom’s sprogs.  They were so low that they could do nothing useful.  That they might as well have not been there at all was the report.  The two pilo’s viewing the sprogs had never seen sprogs this low.  Apparently that’s also how he set them up after the tumble.

I would also suggest that the Conar 16 was probably too small, hence the fast rate of descent.)

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Mon, Oct 13 2003, 1:00:05 pm EDT

to Table of Contentsto next topic Thanks

James Harris|Jeff Huey|William "Billo" Olive|Worlds

Allen Sparks|James Harris|Jeff Huey|William "Billo" Olive|Worlds

We’re on the road so we get our mail every two weeks or so. Thank goodness for mail forwarding services.

Sunday evening I received a completely unexpected letter from a Mrs.  Nancy Harris that included an equally unexpected $50 contribution to the Oz Report.

Now I don’t know Mrs.  Harris, but she writes, “I don’t know how to use the internet, but I want to send a donation.” It turns out that her son, James Harris, mailed her a copy of the picture of his deceased brother John Harris, that I published in the Oz Report.  Jim had sent me the picture.

Nancy wrote, “I never felt it was sport with them.  It was actually their heart and soul.  James is a rescue helicopter pilot for Stanford Hospital.”

It is great to open the mail.  Also Tom Lyon, Allen Sparks, Jeff Huey, and Billo sent me donations recently and Tom sent a picture that reminded me of Australia’s tall poppy syndrome.  Thanks Tom.

Thanks to all those who continue to contribute to support the Oz Report.  Because of these contributions we’ll be able to go back to Australia this year to report on the pre-Worlds, the Australian Nationals and the Bogong Cup without losing too much money in the process.

Discuss "Thanks" at the Oz Report forum   link»

Mon, Oct 13 2003, 1:00:06 pm EDT

to Table of Contentsto next topic Traveling with Pat Conroy

Belinda Boulter|calendar|David Glover|Davis Straub|Pat Conroy|record

We traveled with National Public Radio along the Interstate as we were driving across America.  Sometimes we could get a local station and sometimes there wasn’t one close enough to power through to us.

I was looking for Talk of the Nation, Terry Gross interviewing Bill O’Reilly, Science Friday, the History of the Blues, and All Things Considered.  Most often the local NPR station was playing classical music, which Belinda appreciated.  In spite of this emphasis on classical music the NPR’s audience is growing at a rate of 5% a year.

There was a lot of NPR in the eastern states, but I was surprised to find sophisticated versions of NPR throughout Nebraska (NPRN) and Wyoming (WPR) on statewide networks.  We were amazed that we were able to pick up NPR throughout almost all of Wyoming, which frankly is basically empty along most of Interstate 80.

I’d heard Pat Conroy on NPR a couple of times over the previous few weeks and than at the recommendation of David Glover we starting looking for the spoken word version on 5 CD’s of Pat Conroy’s My Losing Season. We first looked for it at a Cracker Barrel where they basically have a lending library of audio books, but were unable to find it.

Belinda then found My Losing Season at the Flying J in Evanston, Wyoming while I was trying to get there wireless Internet portal to work (the last three Flying J’s hadn’t worked for me). She thought that it would be great for traveling through Nevada, where we assumed that we would lose NPR (maybe we wouldn’t have), and then we could give it to other travelers who would like a good book to help the driving.

There was Car Talk going into Park City, but after that we switched over to Pat.  By the time we were done we were in Winnemucca, where we stopped for the night, and basically we’d been traveling through a virtual Nevada.  In our minds we’d spent the time at the Citadel listening to their varsity team play in the Southern Conference.  Great way to drive for days on end.

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2003 XC/Competition calendar

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The Oz Report, a near-daily, world wide hang gliding news ezine, with reports on competitions, pilot rankings, political issues, fly-ins, the latest technology, ultralight sailplanes, reader feedback and anything else from within the global HG community worthy of coverage. Hang gliding, paragliding, hang gliders, paragliders, aerotowing, hang glide, paraglide, platform towing, competitions, fly-ins. Hang gliding and paragliding news from around the world, by Davis Straub.

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