Ely, Nevada - Accident?

If you are thermaling, the glider is not operating anywhere near a structural limit like any max G or speed. Flying an inattentive slow circle makes for the stall and subsequent spin. (Ask me how I know.)

So why not just fly out of the unusual attitude? Was there another glider, or not enough distance to the ground? Or perhaps there was a problem with the recovery?

It's possible the glider inverted for a moment going well past VNE.

This video is an example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPWaNxTP-SA

9:51 PM (less than a minute ago)



If you are thermaling, the glider is not operating anywhere near a structural limit like any max G or speed. Flying an inattentive slow circle makes for the stall and subsequent spin. (Ask me how I know.)

So why not just fly out of the unusual attitude? Was there another glider, or not enough distance to the ground? Or perhaps there was a problem with the recovery?

It's possible the glider inverted for a moment going over vno and something broke

This video is an example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPWaNxTP-SA

Coming back down a dark cloud street over a mountain valley I pulled into a

vigorous thermal at 50 kt.

Some 270° in the first turn I was flipped inverted and spat out on a
downline in
an eye blink. The trace showed an 11kt drop in TAS in one second followed
by a
9 kt increase one second later.

Best to get the stick back before the airspeed builds recovering from
inverted.

While many glider manuals allow loops, there's very few that allow rolls.

On Tuesday, July 11, 2017 at 2:44:22 PM UTC-7, jfitch wrote:
The story I have heard is pilot lost control in really nasty thermal top, perhaps spin and recovery straight down or inverted, felt the glider was broken or uncontrollable and punched out. Walked back to the FBO. Glider is a ASH31, lying in a remote canyon outside of Ely.

Things can get really nasty out of Ely sometimes.

Been there, done that. Give this a read: http://www.danlj.org/~danlj/Soaring/...b_Thompson.pdf