At 16:00 25 May 2014, Bob Whelan wrote:
On 5/24/2014 8:21 AM, John L Fleming wrote:
son_of_flubber;883103 Wrote:
On Sunday, May 4, 2014 12:27:10 AM UTC-4, Waveguru wrote:-
Premature termination of the tow at 100ft. Did not complete the turn
back to the runway. -

My sympathy to everyone touched by this tragedy.

Turning 180 back to the runway from only 100 feet AGL is unusual. I
wonder why he did that.

I've been watching this thread from day one. I'm back here in New York
and was a friend of Bob and am puzzled by the turn as he always had his
ducks all in a row. I'm too am a glider pilot and I find it hard to
believe he made a steep bank at 100 feet. Bob had accumulated 1000's
of
hours in both fighters and the two single engine aircraft he owned.
MAYBE, there was something wrong with the Zuni and he released because
he couldn't control it?????? For instance........aileron linkage
failure. I would be interested in others thoughts on this. John

My condolences for the loss of your friend. I hadn't been in aviation but
two
or three years before personal aviation acquaintances and friends began
dying
in aviation-related accidents. All I could do was mourn their passing,
try
and
extract lessons for myself (if any), rationalize that they died doing
something they loved, and take some decision(s) for my own future.

Many glider pilots often roll their eyes at "the obviousness" of NTSB
probable
cause conclusions (e.g. pilot failed to maintain sufficient speed), but
one

thing I think NTSB investigators are quite adept at is establishing
control

connection continuity, particularly in the aftermath of low-speed
accidents
as
this (where wreckage is minimally disturbed from effects of the crash
itself),
so probably the best answer to your puzzlement can be expected to come
from

the final NTSB report on this crash.

Bob W.


Some years ago I witnessed a fatal spin-in following a launch failure. It
was a winch launch, the cable broke at about 150 feet agl. There was
plenty of room to land ahead on the airfield but the glider started a turn
to the left, flying obviously rather slowly. It completed about two thirds
of a 360 degree turn and then spun, went down into some trees a few yards
from the airfield boundary on ground about 20 feet lower than the airfield.
I was one of those that extracted the badly injured pilot from the
wreckage (he died in the ambulance before it left the airfield).

In the UK it is almost universal practice to set QFE not QNH on glider
altimeters (most gliding sites are less than 1,000 feet amsl), I noticed
that the altimeter in the wrecked glider was reading about plus 260 feet.
Later investigation showed that the millibar sub-scale setting was
consistent with the pressure on the previous day on which the glider had
flown. It seemed highly likely to me that the pilot had omitted to reset
the altimeter before take-off and, when the launch failed, saw over 400
feet on the altimeter and reacted to that.