Charlie P

An interesting article on spiral dives...

Last updated by Charlie P Comments (21)

Categories: Trike Talk, Equipment, Safety

Comments

  • Ken

    Interesting indeed. Always have preferred my string batten retainers, but wasn't ever sure if I had a good reason.

  • Wile E Scott

    Those are solid questions. I'm not a fan of the clip style retainers myself but my new Profi will most likely come with them anyway. They are on most new wings all over the world. IMHO, it's just one more thing that could fail. The spiral dive consideration is something I hadn't considered though.

  • Charlie P

    The video that accompanied the article was a real eye opener. I will be taking steps to make sure the clips on my Discus wing stay closed during flight.

    Video here:

    Error processing the video

  • Rick D

    Since I have clip retainers this really caught my attention. Watching the video at about 0:20 it appears that the 3 third left batten out from the keel snaps or bends downward. I wonder if that allowed enough slack for the clip to open and then other clips opening cascade from there. Amazing that the pilot survived.

  • white eagle

    First ive heard of this very disturbing thanks charlie

  • ULtrikepilot

    Notice that the HG pilot tightens up the VG just prior to initiating the steep bank maneuver, probably putting a bit more stress on those plastic tip clips under higher G load. Once that first one failed it seemed to propagate to other which I think makes sense. This incident was discussed over on hanggliding.org some time ago. Quite scary to think of that happening and the pilot unable to correct. So what if that pilot would have reduced AoA first and then tried to level the wings. Might that work even with all that extra billow on one wing? Thanks for posting Charlie!

  • Leo

    Hmmmmmm.......perhaps the snap catch had worn out. The little plastic snaps are replaceable.

    Still....shallow observation on my part....the little line he messes with before he starts the dive changes the shape of the wing. I'm assuming some sort of trim method. But the left wing, is not symmetrical to the right after he does that. In fact it has more slack in the T.E and that seems to be what forces the plastic snaps to give. If you guys look closer, you'll notice the batten buckle before the first plastic snap goes then the rest follow.

    There's more going on here that a simple plastic snap failure.

  • white eagle

    so I have plastic snap ends on my falcon 3 battons . should I be worried ? I really don't like the idea that something as simple as a snap batton end could cause a severe uncontrollable uncorrectable spiral dive.
    iam certain that the variable vg and the severe maneuver played a large role in this . it also looks like there is a paniced atempt to get to his hand held parachute or is he doing something else? not sure why there couldn't of been a good deployment of a hand held chute here bewilders me. I always practiced 1 think 2 grab firm 3 good hard throw in the direction of the spin.

  • Rick D

    Yeah David, I don't see an extreme move to get out of an extreme turn. I remember back in my hang gliding days I had even practiced grabbing the down tube with both hands to greatly shift my weight to decrease a severe bank angle. Did you see some cross controlling also? I know when he was going for his chute he wasn't concerned with that but before then...

  • ULtrikepilot

    Dave, plastic batten tips should be replaced when they get worn, that is they snap in place (and unsnap) with virtually no effort. The problem I see is that when one of the inboard batten tips unsnaps or breaks under an extreme maneuver, it would tend to produce extra stress on adjacent tips which could also unsnap aggravating the situation. After thinking a bit more about this video, I do not believe this was an unrecoverable spiral. He should have immediately loosened the VG, reduced AoA and man-handled a high side roll and gotten on the outside of the high wing down tube if necessary. Instead he was futzing with trying to figure out his side mounted chute pretty much all the way down. Pulling the VG tight dramatically increases tension and stress on trailing edge of wing. Yes, I have plastic flip tips on my WW Sport 2 155 and most HG wings these days have them. My guess is that the chances of this happening on good condition tips is very low if you are not doing steep banks in excess of 60deg. Hey, the Solairus has flip tips but I have the pull strings on my Pacer. I think many of the newer light trike wings have flip tips. I bet Charlie's Discus 15T also has flip tips.

  • white eagle

    Thanks rick and joe i never saw snap tips till i got my falcon. Thought they were way cool from what use to be bungees.reminds me of snapping buble wrap. Glad you guys notice that the spiral dive recovery attempt looked weak. You notice that his feet position is still in the central plain. I agree joe he should of released the varible vg . Then like making a hard turn in an old ww comet shifted his legs to the high side than his upper body would have loaded the right wing much more.. his legsshould be slanted to the right than upper body to the right..i could be wrong because iam old school . Ive never flown newer more hp gliders.when i was flying the hp, comet and the duck were popular. But i always wanted a streak. Seems to me you could have a slip sleave that after you snap your tips in would pull down over the snap and securely lock it in place.

  • Wile E Scott

    Hey WE, I was thinking the same slip sleeve solution myself. Maybe every other snap as to prevent the zipper effect as stress is transferred from the snap tip that failed. Seems like an easy solution but maybe this is so infrequent as to not be an issue. Has anyone had anything similar to this happen on a trike? The forces are similar to HG but scaling and materials are slightly different.

  • Jozinko

    ULtrikepilot has right. It wasnt an unrecoverable spiral. The pilot did a lot of other things, not one thing what he should to do - do pilot the wing. I have the Profi wing with plastic buttons, sometimes I flew with therrible air conditions with abnormal G-s ( I cant to control my bar for seconds) but never were the buttons opened. I love my wing.

  • Jackye Reynolds

    Bob Trampenau saw the failure of the snap lever batten tips on launch and changed over to a spring loaded telecoping batten tip. They were quite tough to get out of the batten cuff once you had them installed, but there was an easy technique once you had 2 hands to work with. The snap lever tips can be easily released single handed IMHO.

  • Happy Triker

    That is scary. I remember my incident. I flew my Reflex Sport wing (Double surface 12.5m) with one snap tip broken. I didn't have any problem nor any adverse effect in the flight. The wing has 12 upper battens in each side. Single surface normally has much less battens. That might makes the difference.

  • Charlie P

    I am sure that the pilot in the video could have tried to do more to correct the situation, but at some point you have to decide whether trying to deploy your chute is a better use of your remaining time. That is a decision that each of us may someday have to make so it should be given a lot of thought in advance. The chute on my trike is in an awkward position to reach so I make a point of practicing reaching for it on each and every flight. Even with this practice I have doubts as to whether I could deploy in time given a similar situation.

    Off topic question for flight instructors: in the recent Henry video if the pilot had let go and reached for the chute handle would the trike recover itself?

    Getting back to the original article... If you read the article and links again you will see that this same condition was recently duplicated by a test pilot with similar unrecoverable results, however the test pilot managed to deploy his chute before hitting the ground.

    This article demonstrates that when flying even the little shit can get you killed. We can talk all day about whether the pilot did or didn't do the right thing at the right time. Or, we can spend a few minutes making sure that the little shit is taken care of prior to flight.

  • jeff trike

    A very small asymmetry in the wing can cause huge roll problems. I remember one of my early hanggliding flights, I had a wing that had two velcro straps that attached the wing the the cross bar. One of the velcro straps came loose after launch giving the wing to have an asymmetric billow. It went into a turn. I was all the way over on one side and could just barely keep it going straight. I though about going with the turn and doing a 300 deg turn to line up on the landing area. I am convinced now if I did that, I would wound up in a spiral and crashed. Instead I stayed way over to one side and managed to keep the wing from turning and wobbled down more or less straight to the LZ.

    Checking symmetry on the wing before flight may be the most important step in your preflight.

  • white eagle

    not sure because I don't have enough experience with the snap tips but I assume that if they were worn a little that that could easily been missed in preflight. I am sure we are all guilty at some point at rushing a preflight but I do agree that preflight inspection is the best cure. Recently I found a frayed cable in my post flight. it was the little clip cable that holds the luft lines from the king post; in flight it wouldn't have broken but after a full removal and inspection I determined that it clearly happened while transporting my wing. then I realized that I had missed it on my preflight. looking over the symmetry of your wing really should be the last part before you fly. I damaged a washout tube after my preflight inspection carrying my glider a few feet to launch when the wing tip touched the ground. the bend surely would have caused a turn. So yes good advise in this blog and good to be warned about possible failures of snap tips.
    parachute deployment as in Jeff's case you must have felt you still had control of the glider and made the choice to fly it to the lz. His description of the event shows just how much there is a thin line when making a choice. depending on the situation we really never know how were going to react. As in the spiral video he clearly fumbled for the chute and lost to much altitude. So the decision has to be made at a deployable altitude or the point of no hope. If I was at a hundred feet but knew the outcome was one that I wasn't going to walk away from I would still go for my chute. there were only two times in hang gliding that I thought about deploying my chute. One at paharito in los Alamos when I flew to far down wind of a treed canyon losing altitude. thank god for Dennis pagans book and point of destination. I made it to a good lz but not without thinking about my parachute at least 50 times. The other when I was curious of what my parachute looked like while still in my harness I threw it out in my front yard a big gust drug me clear up the street into traffic. the first was a good choice to use point of destination and to use knowledge to understand if you could make it and not panicking throwing your chute to make matters worse. The second clearly was a very bad choice. But then again it was the 80s

  • white eagle

    we all make good choices and bad choices the ideal is to make more good choices than bad choice . learning about the bad choice before having to make it. we could make the choice to just not to fly and you would never have to worry about dying in a trike crash. but then there's blood clots from spending to much time on the couch. the beauty of bird like flight achieving the once thought impossible to sojourn with the wonders of nature. to really love and live. success is not measured by your pocket book or money or position but by the obstacles you overcome in life.

  • Jozinko

    For Charlies question: wings are divided to recreational and sport category. Normal recreational wings are made for fun flying, xc flying and all these wings are made with asymetric autostable profil. All these wings have powers in control bar when you control it. When you pul/push the bar, you must feel increasing power opposite. The wing is telling you: Hey, we are flying out of normal range! Clever pilot listens his wing and keeps attention to exceeding dangerous border. Autostable profil helps you to return to normal flight position. Sports wings are light controlled without or with very small powers in control bar. They are very fast, but a little unstable. A pilot have to keep control bar every one second in hands. But this wings dont tell you Hey, attention... If you pull the bar too much, sometime you can have to problem return it. If you push the bar too much, you can lost speed and fall by the wing. Normal wings with normal autostable profil are able to recover from spiral itself. With my students we train feeling what the wing is telling us. I try to give our wing to stall and fall to the spiral and student needs to recover it. First time its fight between student and wing. Second time I told him give your hands up. dont keep the bar. Every one trike recovered itself and we lost about 50-100m (164-330FT). Autostable profile did all work alone. After stall and fall along wing side we usually do pull and centralize bar and full throttle for speed increase. Like Henrys fast reaction what saved their lives. Next wing ask you for leave the bar to neutral flying position. But Im talking about trikes. It has more heavy and down centre of gravity than HG.

  • Rick D

    David, Debbie and I were almost falling off the couch laughing about the drag into traffic! 70s, 80s, they were all a blur. :)