Mike Bamberg wrote:
On Apr 5, 2:58*pm, Jim Logajan wrote:
Ian wrote:
I would be very interested, for professional reasons, to hear from
anyone who has used a ballistic recovery chute in a glider.

By "used" do you mean has one installed in their glider, or had to
deploy one due to an inflight emergency? I'm assuming the latter.


There has been at least one installed in an HP-16:

http://www.soaridaho.com/Schreder/HP...S_in_HP-16.htm

BRS, the most well known U.S. vendor of such chutes, keeps a list of "lives
saved" he

http://brsparachutes.com/files/Docum...ives-Saved.pdf

I see some hang gliders listed where BRS chutes were deployed, but I didn't
see any conventional gliders listed (but I'm not that familiar with model
names, so may have overlooked them.) My own search of the U.S. NTSB
database yielded two accidents where the aircraft had ballistic chutes
that proved of no value due to circumstances of the accidents - accident
IDs SEA04FA111 and DFW07LA006:

http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief.asp?e...25X00871&key=1
http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief.asp?e...30X01573&key=1

(The latter accident has already been mentioned.)

If one includes motorgliders, then all the Pipistrel and Lambada
motorgliders have ballistic chutes available either as standard equipment
or options, depending on the model:

http://www.mcp.com.au/pipistrel-usa/
http://www.urbanairusa.com/