[Rick M]

http://vimeo.com/25015047

Friday a few of us flew at Williams Peak. The thermals had some character to them. It was a bit windy at times too. After an hour I had my fill of getting tossed around so I headed in to land. We land right next to a lake and we could see some gust lines moving our way. In fact we could see them for much of the flight. Nothing too bad though. No white caps. The more interesting aspect was the direction. Almost every flight has the wind coming parallel to the road next to the LZ which makes for an easy approach and landing. Today the wind was straight off of the lake making it perpendicular to the road. It also slopes downhill toward the lake in this direction. These combine to make it hard to land straight into the wind.

My plan was to do a variation of the typical approach and land about 45 degrees cross - basically splitting the difference. This way I'm not going straight downhill but accepting landing a little crosswind. But my setup was all wrong.

I almost always start up high on the upwind end of the LZ and wait for good air to land in. This plan was desired today due to the gust lines on the lake. I wanted to time my landing to minimize landing in any stronger gusts. With this extra distraction I made my first mistake of doing figure-eights on the normal upwind end of the LZ, not the current upwind location. I was over the crosswind side since the wind was 90 degrees cross from normal.

Mistake two was in my figure-eights. My last couple were more like S-turns and I had drifted inward so I was almost directly over my planned touchdown point. This made my ability to judge my altitude very poor. As it turns out I was lower than I thought when I attempted to enter my DBF. By the time I realized how low I was, and being in the wrong quadrant of the setup, I started my landing way out of position with less altitude than I needed. It wasn't until I entered the typical downwind that I realized I was actually on the crosswind leg. I knew I was in trouble.

In an effort to get in the right direction I did the next mistake. I made a steep and unintentionally slipping turn onto the true downwind leg. I now found myself going downwind, heading straight for the highway, in a bank, at less than 100'. Somehow I kept the turn going trying to get turned around into the wind and away from the road. This path took me right over another glider in the LZ and a 10' high berm. After scaring the hell out of my buddy nearly dragging my low wing through his glider I leveled out a few feet up and into the wind.

The last obstacle was I now had a lot of side momentum and I drifted into an area full of sage brush. I barely had time to get my hands up and flare. I got caught up in the sage and couldn't run sideways. The glider came down OK on the control frame and I wasn't hurt at all hitting the ground.

In the end I almost pulled it out but it was a close call. Not something I want to repeat. Here's a summary of the mistakes on the approach:

1) Setting up based on the typical winds instead of the actual winds.
2) Getting distracted by the gust lines and the unusual wind direction.
3) Creeping in and getting too close to the touch down point making it very difficult to judge altitude.
4) Entering the pattern way out of position and much too low.
5) Severely slipping a turn in the pattern when already too low.

Doing this analysis has helped me realize a problem I have had on several of my approaches. I recall several approaches where my turn from downwind to base and base to final felt like my glider just wouldn't make the turn as expected. I always pull in a lot of speed on my downwind leg. I think what I do sometimes is make the turns too steep and uncoordinated due to being pulled in for speed. I'm not letting the bar out appropriately to keep the turns coordinated and end up slipping them a bit.

So I need to make sure my landing pattern turns are less steep and ensure I properly coordinate them while still keeping my speed up.

My approaches are usually pretty good but this one was filled with mistake after mistake. I hope others can learn from my mistakes here to make their approaches better.

Enjoy.

[pike]

Rick,
Thanks for sharing. I find these type of posts very educational for the "what if it's me" scenarios.

[Windlord]

Nice flight Rick. Good altitude gains were definitely a bonus for you.
One of those beautiful days in the Rockies. Thanks for sharing.

[Spark]

looked like a good time was had

LZ above 8000' msl + a 'hot' day makes for interesting landings.

At least it was before the catflow started

[Rick M]

Landing at the lake LZ is easy in cat flow. It's uphill into the wind. Matt did that last Tuesday. Of course his landings are always good.

Hope you're healing well Spark.

[Bobfly]

Very nice flight, Rick. Nice climb out, to say the least! Glad you were able to pull off the landing and walk away. You know what they say about landings......

[T9HUBB]

I was there that day as a driver. Rick's statement that the "thermals had some character to them" could be somewhat of an understatement. Everyone who flew had a very challenging time of it. When I was a member of the EAA (Experimental Aircraft Association) they contended that an actual "incident" was almost always the result of a series of mistakes, not just one error. Rick's list of multiple errors confirms this strategy of analysing the reasons for accidents. I have to commend Rick for his thorough and honest assessment of his landing approach. Bad approaches or mistakes on approach patterns are among the worst mistakes we can make as pilots - the consequences can be dire. Thanks again Rick for the write up.