Interesting crash footage from glider.
 

No one was hurt except the plane and some mailboxes.

Oops! How did the pilot come to be so low?

I guess he couldn't find any lift.

BB

He could have come worse off..

Any idea of the location?

Fantastically handled, bet he was just pi$$ed off those mailboxes got in the way otherwise it could have been the cream on the cake of an awesome off airfield landing! :D

Very difficult from the narrow perspective of the film to judge what happened and how our hero came to be in such a tight spot. The film probably starts at no more than 500 ft above the point of arrival, and it's quite possible that the writing was on the wall 5 minutes before the groundloop, as that's when the last likely looking fields might have been rejected in favour of a marginal glide that quickly turned to worms. Personally, I was interested in the reasonably large field disappearing to the port side of the nose some 15-20 seconds in to the video, but then you can't see likely negative factors like slope, wires etc, so again, difficult to judge. Let he who is without sin and all that, but a great vid to use as a reminder as to what happens when height and ideas evaporate simutlaneously. The irony is that he damn near got away with it. But for the fire hydrant or whatever it was, there might not have been a scratch on the glider at all....

looking thro it it looks as though the field has a slope down left to right - but then the road he landed on seemed the same - I think an upslope, down wind landing on the field may have had better results - Its great to sit here and look at it afterwards - the reality is a bit harder.
gk

Some really good questions to and answers from the pilot on the discussion attached to the video. Normally I don't look at the comments on YouTube as they are pretty puerile but this seems to be an exception.

To sum it up, from what I understand he was ridge soaring and went below the recommended lowest altitude before attempting a return to the field. On the way back he was in sinking air up to 600fpm but would have still made it back if he could have made it through the notch in the ridge we see ahead of him on the video. He decided it wasn't going to work and put it down on the road instead but clipped a mailbox on the rollout.

Top marks to him for having the balls to post the clip and being totally honest about the chain of events that led to the accident. At least he didn't panic and had made a plan if things went badly wrong. Could so easily have been another stall/spin fatality. He's an experienced power pilot but fairly new to gliding - he says he's going to edit the rest of the vid. and add comments, should be extremely educational.

Judging by other videos by the same pilot, it's Lake Elsinore in southern California. If you scroll through the comments, you see some other observations by the OP.

Here's my favourite:

I got caught in a similar situation once, but luckily in a high performance glider and was able to reach a notch in the ridge and fly through. It certainly raises the adrenaline level.

Full marks for posting the video

What a brilliant clip and full credit to him for holding it together in difficult circumstances.
He went hard right rather than taking the gap to the left which lead to lower ground!
Would he have made it I think so but I was not there. Instead he chose to hard bank along the hill and onto the road.
Just shows how roads and long winged gliders do not mix with telegraph poles and all manner of obstructions to catch a wing.
But well done to him as not a nice position to be in.

Pace

Definitely Lake Elsinore:

http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c3...at150124-1.png

"The Mailbox" 33°34'58.68"N 117°18'45.08"W

Same here. If you look at the perspective of the gap itself vs. the background, then it looks like the gap is sinking slightly compared to the background. That means he would have made it.

But it's incredibly hard to tell from the video, and if he would have made it, the margin would be very, very slim.

Me personally I would have taken the field left of the road, instead of the road itself. But I wasn't there and all I have to go by is the video.

He seemed to be going pretty quickly; I'd expect him to have made the gap, as well. Decent effort though, and good of him to post it!

I think because of the blue skies and sunshine in the video, it all looks clear cut. Remember, he was in sinking air, probably with significant variations in the amount plus there was a bit of wind, I'd guess coming over the ridgeline he was trying to cross.

You often get a venturi effect over the top of a ridge, which intensifies the downdrafts on the lee side and also has the effect of locally increasing the wind speed, so a double-whammy if you're heading into it. I've had this happen to me when crossing mountain passes - everything looks OK then you're shot down at the last minute. Once it took me three goes to get over a particularly nasty one in the French Alps but I had several thousand feet of clear air to fall back into and try to climb up again - he didn't, so IMHO a wise decision.

NTSB summary here. When he first uploaded the video he still had some others on his channel, one of which was "My first flight in a single seater" dated about a month before this flight.

If he had turned right from where he was @ 10 seconds he could have positioned himself for a reasonable approach into a couple of areas. By carrying on & hoping for the best he backed himself into a corner until the accident became inevitable. As a student pilot he shouldn't have been out of range of the airfield & if he hadn't had much field landing training it's not surprising that he fixated on trying to make it through the gap.

He was in a pretty low performance glider, so at the speeds he appeared to be flying (to get though the sink) he'd have been dropping like a brick.

Overall he did get a couple of early decisions wrong but at least didn't just press on for the gap with fingers crossed. Approach speed was too high - brakes and sideslipping might have mitigated the touchdown speed but overall he got away with it personally and the glider was repairable so the landing site choice was ultimately a good decision!

Hindsight's a wonderful thing. Glad it wasn't me.

It's not hindsight. By carrying on he was either going to get through the gap or he was going to crash. If his chances of getting through the gap are only 50:50 then there's a 50% chance he's going to crash.

The only way to improve those odds is to come up with a plan B that has a better than 50% chance of a safe outcome while you still have enough height. The first 2 slices of Swiss cheese in virtually every field landing accident are 1) pressing on, hoping it would get better & 2) late field selection.

I think he did very well to finish up where he did (in the garbage bags).

its not easy to see garbage from that height...

Makes me wonder about the lack of supervision at this gliding site; power pilots who take up gliding still carry the assumption in the irrational mind that you can put on power and go around.....I've seen exactly this happen.

I wonder if it was his own glider? most gliding ports in the US that I have visited are very very reluctant to let the renter fly cross country. In fact, the instructor/supervisor may have precious little cross country experience; when I was visiting the US, it was not required by the FAA rules.

Choosing a field for an outlanding must be studied, demonstrated in a motor glider, and understood; and in mountains, the local fields must be pinpointed by the local experts at the morning briefing for the benefit of even the most experienced cross-country flatlander. The guy didn't choose his landing area, it chose him. Pressing on and hoping for the best is never a good idea.

PropSwinger

He was lucky!!! He made a sharp right bank itself a manouvre requiring energy ie altitude loss.
He turned towards a higher sharper ridge which could have given an even stronger downdraft and into an area where the only option was the road.
As it was he only just cleared the trees on the left! More downdraft and he would have hit them.
So skillful? Yes! Lucky very much so!!!
I still think he would have made the gap to lower ground.

Mary spot on!! He did not choose his landing site it chose him? It seemed like a last second decision thrust on him and he was lucky to get away with it!
But still credit to him for not stalling out and making the most of a difficult landing site.

Pace

Hey, it's the US. Garbage piles there are huge... :E

DG800

It is difficult due to lens parallax to accurately judge the distances, clearances and heights solely from that movie. The pilot has freely admitted to a litany of bad calls and errors, but was he did that was right was he flew the aircraft right onto the ground. IMO that is the biggest lesson a low time pilot (glider or powered) should take out of this. As long as you have a controllable aircraft, your fate is still in your hands, so make it happen!

Can't open the video .. am getting a message that says "This Video is Private" .... what have I done to upset them ???

I have the same problem. Obviously came to this thread too late!

Field landing accidents do happen to gliders more frequently than other cockups; fortunately in a glider crash you don't need to worry about all that avgas splashing about. Usually, unless there is an invisible power or phone line strung between a couple of trees, the damage is minor, usually the glider protects the pilot from injury. I tell my students "Any landing you can walk away from is a good landing. A very good landing is when you can use the glider again...."

Having said all that, there was a story - probably true - about a glider in France, landed in a recently harvested field, no damage. Until the trailer was towed in by the owner's swanky new car, and the catalytic converter set the stubble on fire....car, trailer, and glider total write off!

It looks like he pulled all his youtube videos following the video's publicity. I'd found his video quite instructional (I'm a glider student aiming for first solo this weekend) and so went searching on google - copies of the video (and elements of it) have been reposted by a number of news sites.

I'd really like to know what prompted him to take it down - too much attention (which I could completely understand) or perhaps some legal reason? (Though I'd hope insurance covers us in case of an outlanding, you know?)

OK Mary ... I think that was first said by Orville to Wilbur .... indeed if it refers to gliders it may have been Sir George Cayley to the butler. ;)

pboyall wrote [snip]:

An element of bad luck (higher than expected vertical down draughts) which could have ended very nastily indeed. Possibly the rules should have been that you stayed on the airport side of the ridge line ... but having a minimum height was probably reasonable 99% of the time. Not flying gliders I have no clue how rapidly you can sink?
-------------

A low performance glider like the one in the video has a sink rate approaching say 200 fpm (2 knots) at normal or slightly faster cruising speeds, much more with the brakes open which is usual for final approach. Higher performance gliders sink at more like 100 -120fpm (1 - 1.2 knots) at cruise speed.

The glider sink rate is not very significant, however, compared with what the airmass is doing. In the lee side of a ridge with a good wind, the airmass could be sinking at 6, 8 or even more knots. It was that which caused the rapid end of the flight, by the look of it, and probably that which happened before the video clip started but which made him too low to get over the ridge and back to the airport. Getting too far behind the ridge in the first place was probably the first mistake.

Chris N.

A moment of inattention on the road, and "biff!" you have encountered another vehicle. Do you say "Terribly sorry, Old Chap, entirely my fault!"?

If you did say that your insurance company would not be very happy.....which is no doubt why this story has disappeared from public view.

News story about someone else landing out in virtually the same place for similar reasons, this time successfully.

I wish I could attach my old photos of an "emergency landing" The weather was hairy, with giant cu building up and up, yet two professional instructors were still flying with trusting students. The organisation had put pressure on the instructors to complete the course!

Long story short, they were on approach, over the hangar at 800 feet! and got caught in a microbust! so intense was the downdraft they could not achieve the runway and so both gliders turned, and landed downwind in a field about a quarter of a mile away. That is, one landed, the other one cartwheeled and ended up in very small pieces. Amazingly, because the ground was soft, nobody hurt at all. I took photos, and gave copies to the lad who was learning in the wrecked machine.....

A few days later, I recieved a call from the Birmingham newspaper. We hear you had a crash, can you tell us about it? "Oh, no, said I, that was a field landing. Gliders do field landings all the time as a matter of routine>"

The next morning, there was one of my photos of the wreckage on the front page with the headline "CLUB REPRESENTATIVE SAYS WE DO THIS ALL THE TIME!"

[quote]It demonstrates the difference between a properly trained pilot accepting the situation, taking control & making a safe landing, & an untrained pilot crossing his fingers & hoping for the best.Would these winds have an effect on the into-wind landing distance required? Perhaps more important than the pilot's actions.

Maoraigh1, that's exactly the point - pick a field before a field picks you. That way you get to choose where you land, plan a circuit & land into wind.

The first guy was just a passenger.

I had the embarassment of landing out in a field less than 5km from the club on my first silver c x country attempt. Field was small with a cross slope and the CFI of the club could see me each training flight and commented on my poor choice when I got back, but no damage and I was a teenager then!

Looks like in the vid copy, he could have scraped over the ridge if he turned left instead of right and then would have had enough height to make the strip. Seems to be about 4km and 1000 feet higher than the strip where he put down.

Thanks, propswinger, for posting the video again, it is very educational......

Only I wish we had been able to hear the pilots remarks after he opened the canopy and stepped out......wonder what he said!

Ah, that is an easy one to guess what he said. Probably something along the lines of...............:mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad: Goddamit! :{

Noisy glider and I didn't like the way the wind noise dropped turning right onto finals. Struck me he slowed down there. I also didn't like the way the wing looked to be moving WRT the fus at the end.

Anyone know what kind of glider it was? Not many have a canopy that hinges on the left instead of the front or right.

It looks like a marginal field next to the road. A slightly earlier decision would have given him an upslope landing, if downwind.

I took a 3,000' tow into wave in an L-13. After release it was never better than -8 and I immediately pointed the glider back to the field. Not too many minutes after, the field was out of sight and at 2,000' I was getting into field selection and picked the one with the thinnest crop. Very quickly after, I was down to 1,000; so took it. I landed at the same time as the towplane, but was 2 miles short.

Most times you pick a field and start a laborious process of digging yourself out hanging about the field taking for itty bitty pieces of lift until you either grab a decent thermal or or have to land. Doesn't happen that way in ridge or wave.

One would think that his instructors would have pointed out the decent outlanding sites before turning him loose in such a hostile area. Perhaps the towpilot thought he was more experienced and took him where he would not normally take solo students.

Bang on the centreline though.