Newcastle Hang Gliding Club

Otherwise know as an accident . . .

Ebbs, Shane and Dustan arrived at Manilla on Friday night to find that Tom was having some sort of a reunion with mates. He had got his band together and they had even cut a CD. The drums were set up in front of the fridge in the breakfast area and the place was jumping.

The next day, Saturday, they headed up to the top of Mt Borah where there was a stiff westerly wind blowing. It was too strong for the paragliders but a nice two step launch for the hangies. They set a task for Uralla and Shane got the closest with 45km. It was a bit rowdy with decent lift to a cloud base of 8000ft ASL. Ebbs could not find the extra lift that was required to follow Shane over Red Jack and landed at the 25km mark. Dustan left the hill with only 4000ft ASL and got heavy sink down to the Baraba road.

I had a family lunch to attend but by 4pm Rod and I were heading to Manilla. The rain cleared as we went through Scone but it was back as we went through Attunga and onto Manilla. Dustan and Shane waited up for us but the partying the night before had taken it's toll on Ebbs and he was in bed. As it was, Shane was barely awake as he tried to stay engaged in conversation with Dale, the Australian/Norwegian, snowboarding, ski instructor, paraglider pilot who never stopped talking and to whom no amount of abuse would stick;

Shane: "Dale . . . Hey Dale . . . You guys just throw your laundry out and you're flying."
Dale: "Well at least we're not lawn darts like you."
Shane: "Lawn darts? At least our aircraft don't pack themselves up while we're flying."
Dale: "Yeah but we save time by being able to launch with them only half setup."

And so it went on until finally we all went to bed.

On Sunday the sky was a bit gloomy as we looked out from the breakfast area but it slowly improved and we headed out to Borah. We set up at the E launch and Shane was the first off but shortly after Mt Borah did it's thing and switched the direction from SE to SW. Shane worked hard for half an hour until the shade and the lee side breeze convinced him that he was now on the wrong side of the mountain. It did not stop him from doing a text book landing underneath the big tree where the briefings are usually held.

The rest of us carried out gliders over to the west launch and by the time we got there Don was back with Shane. He was just in time to see a tremendous storm cell dump it's load to the S of us. It caused a gust front that halted operations for a short while until the sun returned. It was at this time that I decided to commit aviation and I carried my glider down to the edge of launch where Dustan held my wires. The wind was a bit gusty and crossed from the left so I waited a little.

Eventually I yelled "Clear!" and Dustan dived to my right. My glider reacted to this and dived to my left, without consulting me. I pulled the right hand corner of the A frame into my groin and cleared the trees as she straightened up and gained height. Rod was next and he also dropped his left wing. Dustan pointed this out Shane who was next in line and he ran off with his body way over in the right of his A frame.

The air was rough and the thermals were scrappy. I managed to get above the hill and at one point I thought I was away as I high-sided and pushed the bar out with the vario singing. But it was not long before I found myself at the bottom of the pack at the start of a flush cycle. I worked the spurs but lost more than I gained until I decided it was time to head for the western bomb-out.

Rod was already there after having gone to the right after take off and not finding much. I pulled on some rope as I thought to myself that I may have made my exit from the hill a little late. I was not going to have a lot of time to setup a landing. Things started getting busy and, as my Canadian mate Rick says, "The one thing you don't want to be doing in a topless glider at low altitude is getting busy". I wasn't sure which way the wind sock was blowing. Was it coming towards me or away from me. I thought it was towards me so as I crossed the SE fence line I was about to do a left hand turn onto final when I realised the wind was the coming in the opposite direction. By then I was further down the paddock than I wanted to be and I did not have enough height to get down wind enough to setup a right hand turn onto final. I had to do a right hand turn where I was or risk going in low behind trees in the next paddock.

I'm not sure wether it was due to the fact that my turn was too slow or wether my approach was more down wind than I thought or wether Mother Nature was having a bad day and had decided to provide some dirty air but before I new it my head was just above the height of the grass and I was watching my life flash by VERY fast. As a reflex to my inevitable impact with whatever large rocks lay hidden beneath the grass I pushed the bar out hard and to my surprise impact with the earth was not made. Instead I started rising into the air.

This resulted in some very mixed emotions. On the one hand I was relieved about not hitting the rocks but on the other I was approaching the height of the windsock and I was running out of airspeed. Now at the top of my arc I felt like the Wile E. Coyote suspended in mid air having just chased the Road Runner off the edge of a cliff.

At this point I felt that pulling the bar in would have enhanced the stall that I had unfortunately set in motion and I would be back to the hidden rocks in the grass scenario. So I pushed the bar out and tried to hold it. Because I was still in my final turn, and side slipping, my right wing stalled and the glider and I started to rotate and as we plummeted back to earth we left a little cartoon puff of dust cloud behind followed by a very real puff of dust as we hit the ground. The right hand corner of my A frame, the one that I had been so intimate with earlier, hit the ground hard and the right upright snapped just below the sleeved section. The wing, to my surprise did not land hard at all but I did. I had a horribly familiar feeling of bones turning to rubber as my right foot, having previously been in a similar situation, said to my left foot, "You're on your own buddy, this sort of thing ends with hand tools in an operating theatre and I've got the screws and plates to prove it", and raised itself out of the way leaving my left foot to take the full weight of my body. It was not up to the task and buckled. Due to the initial momentum my body then swung around and became intermit with the left hand corner of the A frame.

Dustan tried to raise my on the radio to see if I was alright but he needn't have bothered because Bushy's wife could hear me quite well from the carpark on the top of the hill. I was angry. I don't usually fly into fists of rage but I was screaming out obscenities at the the top of my lungs as I threw my gear on the ground. Previously that week I had blown up another car engine which was going to cost $3000 to fix and now I had dipped into what savings I had left in order to come away for this weekend, seriously jeopardising my chances of being able to afford a week at the state titles and what did I have to show for it? I had brought the rain to Manilla, done a crappy launch, broken an upright and worst of all I was running out of ankles.

Shane was soon circling overhead and setting up the approach that I should have. He landed perfectly right next to the windsock! Then Bushy landed along the same runway in his Falcon. Everyone keep their distance as I limped around the wreckage, determined that if I could walk through the pain my ankle would not be broken. Once I had calmed down our driver Don came down and helped me pack up.

I rode in the front seat of the Rodeo back to the top of the hill with a beer to calm my nerves and a bag of ice on my now swollen ankle. Dustan and Ebbs said the carnage in the western bomb-out had scared them into packing up and soon we were all having a beer and I was laughing off my saw foot. As the night progressed it got sorer and bigger and pain killers were required by an early bedtime of 8pm. By 12am I was unable to weight bear without the aid of a cardboard tube that contained my battern profile. By morning it was a little better and I was able to hobble.

I decided to stay at the pub on Monday morning while the team headed back up to Borah for some more westerly winds. This time it was Ebbs who left the hill too early and Rod did another good landing in the western bombast. I had the radio on so when Shane came over the town at 500ft on his way to the airstrip I was able go and meet him in my car. He got back up though and Dustan cruised in at 7000ft ASL to join him. They headed off to the tower and generally played around without a care. Shane did another excellent landing with a good approach but Dustan was less fortunate with the wind direction. The tail of the windsock followed him around on his approached and as he went past it on final he was heard saying, "The bloody thing is following me". A cloud of dust puffed up as Dustan's feet tried to slow his arrival and he managed to avoid a nose in as a result after which the dust blew past him. Just then the Rodeo turned up with Rod and Ebbs.

Rod drove me home so that I could keep my foot on ice. This morning Tanya x-rayed my foot and I have broken my fifth "mega castle" or soothing that sounds like. It's the bone that comes back from the small toe. Very common injury when you roll you foot apparently. The big boot that I threw in the back of the cupboard 6 months ago and hoped never to need again is now back in place on my left foot in order to immobilise it while I hobble around on crutches unable to bear weight for two weeks. Friggin great.

So the moral of the story? Don't have unplanned events.

Had I left myself a greater margin for error I could have done a better landing. I would have had more time to assess the conditions from above the landing paddock and as such plan my event so that I arrived into the wind and with enough height.