Sort of backcountry... Yikes!

Here is the view from the ground...

That's pretty insane. I wasn't aware that hang gliders had emergency chutes. Even that isn't fool proof considering you have a huge spinning mass that could destroy/tangle a chute pretty quick. Lucky dude I would say.

-Asa

Cool videos. Don't know much about hang gliding... are those rated for aerobatic loads? was the chute one of the ones you throw by hand? great job staying in the game and not just filling up one's pants.

That looked completely intentional to me. No legitimate reason whatsoever to put that kind of load on the glider, even doing moderate aerobatics. Either intentional Jackass TV, or uber-Darwin Award stupid.

The glider looked like it was going to wrap up the chute at any moment once the chute was deployed. The chute could have gotten fouled in the glider during deployment. If it was a hand-thrown chute then the pilot could have been knocked upside his head by the glider and been unable to deploy it.

The fact that it happened conveniently over a lake, which is not usually hang gliding territory, makes me think it was possibly a structure test, or a demonstration, or a TV stunt. Having a boat conveniently pull up to the splashdown point supports that theory as well.

My first flight instructor's "other job" was crashing airplanes for a living for movies. I also had the bad fortune to watch a student pilot intentionally pull an airplane apart in the air (SGS 2-33 glider), and it folded up just like the HG in the video. I can still hear the bang when the wings clapped together over the fuselage.

Intentionally over-stressing an airframe is scary as hell, but it does happen occasionally. More balls than I got.

Here is what the pilot posted on Facebook:

"My Hanggliding accident last tuesday on Video. I am OK but still suffer from sore eyes and head-ache after serious negative G-force. after glider collaps, my harness was somewhat broken and I was sentrifuged head out. My vision failed and I struggled hard against g-force to get my rescue out.
On the GoPro it is possible to see details.
I have lots of speed and get an abrupt pullout by accident. The reason for this is to high speed, and bent elbows on the bottom of the dive.
I flew a Moyes Litespeed rx4 with racing wires. With standard (thicker) wires the glider may have stayed together (although not built for 160+ km/h...and G-force probably above 7?)
https://vimeo.com/173252167
https://vimeo.com/173368686"

Just plain (or plane?) frightening!

Cary

I watched a friend do that once in MY hanglider... scary shit.
He got his chute out but lost a lot of vert doing so, spinning just like that.

To prevent tangling the chute with the flailing glider there's about 20 feet of nylon/kevlar webbing that deploys before the lines and the canopy come out of the bag.

That was a remarkable hand deployment. I've seen two failed deploys without much spinning going on at all.

Many hang gliders can take a lot more than 7 G's...more for being resilient enough for normal launch and landing mishaps and handling than for flight loads. Many use heavy flying wires and leading edge and cross tube stiffeners for aerobatic use. A glider can't normally maintain more G-loading than its L:D ratio for more than a short time, and newer gliders (like this topless model) can still approach 10:1 even when under a heavily loaded condition.

But that was a lot of speed for a loop. He indicated he had racing wires on as well. High G's in many hang gliders causes the nose to pitch up due to the tips washing out under load that cause the load factor to increase fast. Even at 45mph on one of my old wings (a TRX), the same bar position would progress from a normal entry to head popping g's during entry unless the bar was pulled back pretty close to a normal glide position after the initial entry.

Here is John Heiney showing a light touch, moderate airspeeds, light g-loading, and some good fun:

In an aerobatic airplane, doing a proper loop (one that looks like a round loop and not a lower case cursive "L") requires reducing aft pitch to float over the top, then increasing it again in the downline to pull out at the entry altitude. It's been so long since I've done any aerobatics that I frankly don't recall where in the process the pitch is changed. But pretty clearly, any "flying machine" can be overstressed to the point of breaking.

This video is one of the most sickening:



Cary

Cary wrote:This video is one of the most sickening:

Link fixed. Though I'm not sure what the connection is to the thread...