I believe that Richard might not have been injured had he been flying a more basic wing.

 I should not have been crashing in the first place; this is pure pilot error and the result of my not following instructions perfectly. I should not have put out my hand to brace myself; again my error. However, I do feel that some part of my training should have covered practicing a tuck and roll type fall.

Reporter: Alberto Goldstein AlbertoGoldstein@compuserve.com
Pilot's Name: Orlando Leyton
Pilot's Rating/Experience Level: Wintech Ajax 26/Emergency parachute: Adventure double canopy type
Glider: Placivel-La Victoria, Venezuela Harness: June 21, 1997
 Orlando Leyton is a very experienced pg pilot with more than 5 years of almost daily flying; he is pilot instructor and owns the school namend "SOARING" in La Victoria, Venezuela. Following is the description of Orlando's emergency which, thank God, didn't end with a funeral: Orlando was performing high-pitch wing overs aiming to reach a "loop" or "roll". He does this frequently. He was about 500 mt above the ground. At the crucial moment he made a mistake and changed the pitch, lessening the pressure of the inner side, which wrinkled badly and finally closed. He fell against the wing tip and went through to the other side, tearing the lines. He immediately tried to deploy his emergency parachute; he threw it according to the usual method but it didn't open, it remained in the envelope-type contaimer bag. At this moment,he saw the starting place pass by, which is 150+ mt above the ground. He pulled back the parachute package and pulled the parachute out of the envelope by hand. Luckily it opened fast, he was nearing the ground very rapidly. Orlando landed safely.

 Is a folding type parachute container a better option than a closed envelope type container? In case this type is used, it might be advisable to check that the parachute fits easily and loose in the envelope. Orlando accepts that when he packed his reserve parachute, not long ago, it fitted rather tight in the envelope;he should have re-folded it more closely.He changed from the envelope type container to the folding type one (with the 4 overlapping triangles).

 1.NEVER do any kind of maneouvers without a reserve, without enough altitude (-700 meters -2000 feet), without knowing your wing , without been trained, and WITHOUT checking for safe landing in glider or parachute. 2. avoid completely fly above power lines, house, water ,rock cliffs or high trees when doing maneouvers. 3. carry a protection like an airbag (this one save me from smash the tree with my back). 4. carry a strong thread to pull up a rope in the event of tree landing (or prepare to be a VERY long time in the tree!!) 5.try to stop the turn before it developes an unstoppable spiral 6 i´ve heard of an assymetrical front a intentional collapse to get off the entanglement, please correct me if im wrong and tell me more efficient techniques..FLY SAFE

 Stable training canopies can be VERY tricky! They forgive great ammount of bad handling. Pilot might not even know of his bad habits that would be dangerous on performance glider. It's crucial to teach the beginer to handle the training canopy as gently and carefully as if he was flying a competition glider!

 Pay attention to where you are going, particularly close to the hill. Getting comfortable can wait. In retrospect this pilot was perhaps not quite ready for mountain flights.

 Experience is not enough! There are don'ts that even the champs must remember: Don't take off if you need more than one person to hold you during inflation! Always wear a back protector!

 Proper gear, including ankle supporting boots, full face helmet, and a back protector, helped save the pilot's life. The reserve she was carrying was much too small for her flying weight, and with the entire weight coming down under the reserve, it began to rotae, with what was left of her wing in the slip-stream acting as a rudder, spinning her. What could have done differently? Many things, starting with the decision to take off and get high in these conditions. An adjacent skydiving field was closed earlier due to the turbulent upper level conditions. Wind shear is not an uncommon occurrence at this site, and caution must always weigh heavily on every pilots mind. The wing the pilot was flying on was highly advanced, and she has been cautioned by other experienced pilots and instructors, I am told, that it may not be appropriate wing for her to fly. It is every pilot's responsiblity to make sure that the reserve they are flying with has desirable characteristics other than a small pack size. The use of a para-swivel similar to those used on hang gliders, or perhaps a dual bridle reserve, would have minimized the danger of a small reserve. Was the decision to completely bring in the wing the right one? Perhaps she did not have a choice in this case, but in most reserve deployments you only want to stop your main wing from downplanning, which can be done by pulling in one side ( a brake line or whatever you can reach) of th ewing until you are grasping fabric. This still leaves a lot of wing in the air stream to help the reserve slow you down, and probably would slow your rotation as well. Remember that in the vast majority of reserve deployments you are only seconds away from impact with the ground, and rotation of reserve is going to not have much time to take effect.

 There were propably two different reasons: 1) after 70 hours of flying (= 70 Starts), the D-lines were about 2 centimeters two short. 2) the canopy was wet because of slight rain during the flight.

 Me and my friend decided to try launch pulling glider with a car. Having no reliable information how it's not to be done, we attached harhess to the 70m long rope with handmade lock and started takeoff. Twice takeoff had gone successfull. I was in the car and my friend in the harness. Need to say that my friend had no any skills in car driving before, but that time it wasn't a reason for me not to try takeoff also. So, I tried and 3 or 5 seconds later find myself at 40m with almost stalled canopy and rope going down to the car moving very fast... Few seconds more and I managed detaching and tried to let canopy fly, but it was at 50 degrees bank at my right. Everyone can say what happened after. Canopy started to recover from deep spin at 40m height from almost stalled position. I falled to the ground with high vertical and horisontal speed and had broken my spine.

Two monthes in the hospital where enouth for me to study following things: 1. Never use car with hard rope for takeoff. Any strong gust will increase angle off attack to critical. 2. Rope must be long enouth, longer than 500m. Otherwise you'll have no time to handle glider if something goes wrong. 3. Use rope locks which allow you to detach at any tension. 4. First Learn Then Fly!

 Launched in medium winds. After ridge soaring for 2 hours, noted that wind had increased a tad..with the windsock on the launch site now standing straight out. As I was still penetrating ok on the slope, I wasn't too concerned, and I still had my speed system. After hitting a big thermal I pulled four 360s and found myself about 1000' over launch, going backwards. Application of full speed system resulted in a very slow backwards (1 or 2 kph)drift. Hoping for a drop in wind speed, I hung on for a minute, slowly loosing altitude, (Yamaska is a large volcanic caldera, totally wooded on top except for a lake in the centre. It is about 2 km wide). My options were: hold on some more and try and get back in front of the hill; turn orund and try and run off the back of the caldera (penalty for failure..landing in trees miles from anywhere); or 3rd option (later recommended by local pilots) of landing in a shallow part of the lake. I picked door number 1, hoping at least to make a top landing behind the LZ. Didn't make it, and landed in a tree. No injuries, $500 damage to glider.

 While not a very dramatic accident, beware of getting high above a ridge on a strong day. Even though you can penetrate fine in front of the ridge, the wind vector is around 40 or more degree, lowering the horizontal component dramatically. As soon as you get above the ridge, the vector turns 100% horizontal, and bingo. I should have resisted the temptation to thermal, flown out from the ridge, and landed.

 A 36-Year-Old pilot, John Rankin, of Wasilla Alaska, was killed on September 2nd. The Anchorage area flying community, a close knit group of pilots, all are deeply affected by their loss of one of their most up-beat, enthusiastic and well-liked pilot. Conditions at this mountain ridge and thermal soaring site had been steadily improving all afternoon, with the wind directly up slope at 12-15 mph at 5:-- in the afternoon when John launched. Earlier there has been some turbulence observed, with winds from zero to as high as 20 mph in fairly long transitions. John was off in this favorable cycle, and after benching up from launch made his way to a steep-sided ridge used by pilots for making their way to the next valley. Two pilots who had made it to the ridge elected to come back to the slope above launch, where winds and conditions were smoother. Witnesses on the ground and in the air reported John taking a full frontal collapse, followed by a front horseshoe, one side partially inflating, followed by a negative spin with 3 spirals to the ground. Altitude was approximately 400 feet when he took his deflation. No attempt was made to throw his reserve. Impact on the rocks was estimated at 30 to 40 mph. John then rebounced, and dropped an additional 10 to 20 feet to the base of the rock outcropping, losing his helmet with a modified chin strap in the process. Highly skilled mountain rescue EMT pilots were on the scene in a very short time given the terrain, but were not successful in their life-saving efforts. Death was thought to be instantneous.

 John wanted to fly, and fly longer and higher than any of his fellow pilots. John was flying on a used Nova Sphinx competition level glider that he bought recently. His skills were not up to the wing's needed pilot input. He had 235 flights, but 40 of his 52 total hours were with a paramotor, on a very stable wing. His experience level was inadequate for the flight that was his last. Many of his fellow pilots commented to him that he needed to work on his launch skills and get more air time in a stable paraglider before he should try to fly such an advanced wing. John would listen, because he was interested in anything concerning his flying, but he did not hear the concern behind the words from his flying buddies. He let his love of the sport and his competitive nature overcome the common sense that perhaps would have kept him alive. What can we learn from this? Flying is a very unforgiving sport for people taking shortcuts to a higher level. Don't try to become an expert pilot faster than the learning curve allows. Don't make your friends write your final accident report. Speak up and keep your fellow pilots safe. Don't let their enthusiasm to reach new levels of flying proficiency get ahead of their piloting proficiency. Fly safe.

Kinsley Wong's comments:
I STRONGLY urge every pilots to submit EVERY ACCIDENTS! A little of your time can be very VALUEABLE to all of us. From all these accidents, we can learn from the past mistakes, local sites' conditions, the behavior of the gliders, etc...
Also, it is the responsiblity of us - the sellers (instructors, dealers, owners) to make sure that the buyer/pilot has the required skills, experiences to fly the glider.

 I am a begginer pilot with about 15 short,low flights on this same training hill. On my third or fourth flight of the day under the supervision of my instructor(ushga). It was about11:A.M. and I was practicing reverse inflations and take-offs. I made a good inflation,checked my risers and all things being correct started to to run. My body was bent forward and my arms back and up . The kiting exercises earlier had left me in a slightly diffrent starting point for my run and the wind was a bit more northerly as well meaning I was running down a somewhat unfamiliar slope. I actually thought that this was my best and most controlled take-off and was expecting a great lift and a long flight. I had a great deal of running speed as the first rock pile appeared in front of me so I popped the brakes but only barely got off the ground (3-4 feet)and continued downslope gaining speed. A second pile of rocks was in my path and coming up quickly ,I pulled on the brake again but no lift. There was on particularily large sharp lava boulder and I fended it off with my right foot in the hopes that I would be thrown away from the pile as I crashed (I was). Unfort- unatly my foot clad in a light weight nylon/leather hiking shoe was smashed very badly. I broke 6 bones in my foot and required 3 hours surgery as well as being out of work 4 months. .

 As with most accidents I think several things went wrong. #1 My instructor should have been teaching me in a canopy certified for my weight and ability. #2 I should have selected a more reputable instructor. I thoughtthat a USHGA certification was enough.It isn't #3 I was aware that the canopy was small for my weight but I didn't know how important it was to safety. #4 I should have worn extra heavy duty boots with thick soles and steel shanks.I probably wouldn't have been so badly injured. #5 I should have considered the financial consequenses of an injury as a self-employed person before taking up the sport. #6 The instructor should have selected a training hill free of obstructions and debris. If anyone has any further ideas on this accident feel free to write me . Aloha PAT

 Shane Scott ("Scotty"), a New Zeland pilot with significant experience, was attending the 1996 Telluride Paragliding Competition and Festival as a non-competition pilot. On the first flyable day of the competition (Saturday, 30 June), a second task was scheduled in the afternoon after an excellent morning task was completed. Scotty volunteered to be a "wind dummy" for this second task. After ideal conditions during the morning task, the afternoon was looking to be nothing less than absolutely perfect, with numerous small cumies dotting the sky. Just before launching, Scotty was instructed to fly away from the Telluride Gold Hill