Joined: 09 May 2007 Posts: 113 Location: Greenwood, IN
Posted: Tue Jun 19, 2007 1:52 pm Post subject: Too much confidence - not enough skills
A GA pilot friend of mine once told me that when a pilot gets past the nervousness of those first several solo flights and he settles into a comfortable groove where things are now routine and no longer scary… when he starts to push the limits… that is when he is at his most likely to have an accident. Over-confidence in a 20 hour pilot can be a dangerous thing, which I was about to discover first hand…
The LZ is a small grass strip airport with a couple hangars, used primarily by ultralights and a few GA airplanes. The wind was out of southwest. The runway runs east and west, so I was going to have to launch across the runway. I’ve done this before and it’s no big deal.
I went ahead and set up near the hangars so I’d have more distance before I got to the edge of the runway.
As I was strapping in, I noticed the wind had shifted and was now directly out of the west. It wasn’t a lot of wind, but it may have been as much as 3 mph. This is where I made my first mistake. Instead of unstrapping and re-setting, I decided to leave my setup as it was and just deal with the new direction of the wind. I think this lapse in judgment came from being overly eager to get into the air (I had run back to my car several times for stuff I kept forgetting), plus being overly confident in my launch skills. After all, I hadn’t had to abort a low-wind forward launch in several flights... Plus just two flights prior to this one, I took off with a tail wind, which made me feel like I could do ANYTHING. Another thing I failed to think about was that this wasn't my normal "home field" LZ, which is very open and allows major changes in direction during your launch. This launch wouldn't have been hairy at the home field. But here there were a lot more obstacles to consider, which I didn't do.
I got all ready to launch and the wind was still directly from the west. I waited impatiently for it to shift back to put me right into the wind. As soon as it shifted just a tiny bit (not nearly back to where I needed it to be) I went for it. My wing came up crooked and immediately pointed almost directly west, This would have been great had I been out on the runway, but it put me pointed almost directly at a parked Cessna Skyhawk that was in front of the hangars maybe 100 feet away or so. Mistake #2 I probably should have aborted right here. Instead, I turned to run with the wing, but I was pointing myself a little to the left of the parked plane to try and force the issue and take off in the direction I wanted to (and miss the plane of course). I made this adjustment with run direction and maybe a little brake – it is my habit to use very little brake during a forward launch and to make most adjustments with crabbing and run direction. I did not give nearly enough brake pressure to get the wing to go my way. My Paratoys wing was still pointing right into the wind. I was able to get airborne, but as I did I swung under the off-center wing and now was pointed directly at the plane. I think I pulled some brake to miss the plane to the right, but I came back down and was running again after maybe a 15 foot trip through the air. Now I was pointed to the right of the plane, between the hangars and the tail of the plane. Still full throttle, I leaned back and got airborne and threaded the needle between the tail of the plane, the wind socks, and the hangar. It was pretty scary. I should have aborted several times.
Reading through incidents it seems like one of the most common errors that PPG pilots make is committing to a bad launch instead of aborting. I fell into this trap and lucked out. It could have been really bad.
This would have been such an easy launch had I just moved out to the runway and set up into the wind after it changed directions. I know I need to work on my ability to steer the wing around better while I'm making my launch run. I can center it and launch very consistently and reliably, but that's doing it the way the WING wants to do it.... I've never tried to master making the wing launch the way I want it to go. That's a skill I plan to work on.
PS - the video was shot with a 1/2 power wide angle lens... so everything was twice as close as it looks. One bystander said it looked really scary.. so scary he turned his head so he wouldn't see the impact with the plane. The more I watch the video, it really doesn't look that close or that dramatic... anyway it was probably close enough to fall into the "that was stupid" category... :shock: _________________ The sky is not the limit... the ground is!!!
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