Originally Posted by Slopey
There was some debate about the survivability of landing on trees - the feeling being it was reasonably survivable - anyone have any stats on that?
I've known 3 gliders that have landed in trees. Two of the gliders were busted up, one had a couple leading edge dings repaired and is flying now. All 3 of those accidents were in the daylight (obviously) and happened at very slow speeds. No injuries.
At my old club one of our tow pilots had ridden through a tree crash in his friend's Maule. Nobody hurt. Some factor of luck, but trees can be good to crash into, if you have to crash into something. The problem becomes if you fall from the trees. And, if you are hurt, can they find you. All worse at night.
Originally Posted by tacpot
I'm afraid the standard advice of "Pick a dark patch - turn on the landing light. If you don't like what you see... turn it off again "
Partly that advice seems to be in jest. But if there is any seriousness in it, it is probably better to crash into the trees at minimum sink, than it is to stall, panic, and go straight in.
Landing on a road at night scares me a little bit. Not for the cars, but for the wires. In my part of the world, most roads have wires cris-crossing them.
-- IFMU