Training 5/18/08 - A morning ofcarnage
<b>Training 5/18/08</b><p>A morning of - Training 5/18/08
A morning of carnage
Chad G. and Kevin S. were out again for lessons. I met them just after 7am. Tom was teaching a HG student and Liz was on the training hill as well. Lessons were going well until Tom's student, flying from 1/2 way up the hill, paralleled the hill too closely after a turn, and landed safely with his nose into the wind 1/3 of the way up the hill. I'd never seen a downhill landing like it. Somehow the student pulled off what should be practically impossible.
Signs of spring. Enclosed are some hand held humming bird photos I've taken in the past days. I'm keen to set up a tripod with a wired remote to capture them at close range
Just then on the other side of the hill, a PG student crashed. I hadn't seen him stall 20ft. off the ground and hit hard. Tom and my student yelled to me, and I sprinted over to the down PG pilot. He was conscious, but in pain and not moving much. I was assessing his condition and trying to figure out if he needed an ambulance when his instructor and others showed up to attend to him. Apparently several 911 happy folks had already summoned the ambulance, and I let more capable hands attend to the pilot.
As I was walking back to the training hill, Tom's student took his next flight and turned directly into the hill this time. He piled in downwind fly on the wall style and took out a downtube. What the hell was happening? Carnage was rampant. I talked with my students about the incidents, and we kept training.
A shutter speed of 1/4000 of a second wasn't fast enough to freeze the motion of this little guy.
Near the end of the day, a pilot flying a TRX was coming down to land at the bottom. I prompted my students to watch his approach. The approach was botched from the beginning, and eventually the pilot pounded in cross wind on the hillside blowing through a downtube. The pilot was unhurt. After a couple more training flights, we ended the day safely.
Flights: 1.
Sunday Afternoon
As I worked in the back yard during the afternoon, I watched pilots set up and fly Inspo. It looked like most had a great flight, some ended up in the bailout LZ just across the street from my house. If you click on the photo above you can see the gliders set up on launch as a speck.
I'm fortunate to have a flying site in my backyard. Closeup of the gliders on launch.
