Video of off-field landing from cockpit

On Oct 19, 5:13*pm, Liam wrote:
On Oct 19, 8:32*am, Brad wrote:



On Oct 19, 9:09*am, Greg Arnold wrote:

On 10/19/2010 9:04 AM, Bruno wrote:

I love having an HD video recorder in the the cockpit to share
experiences like this. *When you do good you can share it and brag and
when you make mistakes you can get good feedback and advice from the
world. * *Thanks for the ideas and I will try really hard to
incorporate them in my future flying...and future land outs.

Thanks,
Bruno Vassel IV - B4

Bruno, you are a brave guy to post these videos, with a thousand
kibitzers standing by on the sidelines.

ditto..................

Brad

"who had been impaled many times for posting videos........by his
clubs safety monkey(s)"

I think he could have held it off longer before touchdown (the stick
wasn't full back against the stop). *Also, I saw his yaw string
deviate from straight by 15 *degrees or so at times. *And he didn't go
through his checklist out loud. *What a horrible, horrible pilot.

i thought a high energy skidding approach was the American Way?

On Oct 19, 6:56*pm, Bruno wrote:
On Oct 19, 11:35*am, Derek C wrote:

On Oct 19, 5:04*pm, Bruno wrote:

On Oct 19, 7:44*am, wrote:

On Oct 18, 2:08*pm, mattm wrote:

On Oct 18, 2:03*pm, mattm wrote:

On Oct 18, 1:03*pm, Bruno wrote:

Hey everyone. We had a fun weekend up in Utah with many gliders up in
the air enjoying the amazing fall colors and mountain scenery.. *At the
end of Friday's flight I decided to extend the flight and go play out
in the weak wave lift in the valley northeast of the Logan airport. It
was fun until it stopped being fun...

For those of you who have not yet enjoyed an off-field landing, this
video shows the final 6 minutes before the landout and then landing in
the farmer's alfalfa field. It does a good job of showing the desire
to try to stretch and make it home but in the end making the correct
decision and landing safely short of the airport in a good field.
Please note the field was chosen and looked over well before the gear
came down.

Other than a few green leaves that needed to be washed away from the
bottom of the glider it was no worse for wear and I am thrilled to
have the video to share with others of what the experience of landing
in a field is like.

Please watch the video in the highest resolution your computer and
connection can handle. *It was shot in 1080HD and at that resolution
you should be able to read all the numbers on the instruments.. *The
camera is a Canon HF20 with a fish eye lens which does a great job of
distorting my face... *It is mounted on 1" ball RAM mount
adjustable arms. *I have a custom voltage reducer to take a full 12
volt 7 amp/hr battery and lower it to 8.4 volts so I get 7+ hours of
battery life. The standard camera batteries only last a few hours max
so this is necessary.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBfNA5nhGQM&hd=1

Here is the igc file - it wasn't an impressive flight but you can see
the trace at the end where the video shows the final moments.http://www.onlinecontest.org/olc-2.0....html?flightId...

Thanks for watching and hope you enjoy.

Bruno Vassel IV - B4http://www.youtube.com/user/bviv

Excellent video. *Wish I had this available last month when I was
giving a land out
talk. *There's a few things that you should learn from the experience,
though
(shouldn't there always be?), as suggested by the likes of Tim Welles
and
Kai Gertsen:

1. turn off the radio when you're low -- it's just a distraction.

On Oct 19, 6:56*pm, Bruno wrote:
On Oct 19, 11:35*am, Derek C wrote:

- Show quoted text -

Some of the thermal bubbles you ignored were quite good by UK
standards. Perhaps you should come over here for a holiday next summer
to find out how to use them?

Derek C

Are you sure they were good? *These weren't thermal bubbles but mostly
wave lift bouncing off the valley floor. *I didn't feel much in the
seat of the pants with many of these spikes and assume they were more
horizontal wind gusts. *Again, I am happy to learn more. *Please post
some of your own videos of thermalling so I can get a better feel from
what you are talking about. *

Bruno - B4

Always happy to oblige:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3w0Aqu1maWc

Derek C - G-DBJD

On Oct 19, 1:36*pm, John Cochrane
wrote:
- Show quoted text -

If the pilot hadn't rejected some weak lift (by US standards) and then
glid in a straight line rather than faffing around, he might have made
it back!

Derek C

Let's see if I can put the same observation a bit more politely. In
part, as this sort of video makes a great training tool for aspiring
cross country pilots. Lessons learned? One big one, of course, is that
stretching final glides for the last 2-3 miles at very low altitudes
is a coffin corner, and this pilot made the right decision not to try
it. The wisdom of "glid in a straight line" depends very much on
terrain and altitude. Mc 0 + 10 feet and unlandable terrain makes it a
bad idea.

But, as Derek points out, the beginning part of the video shows a lot
of waffling around in 10 - 20 degree bank, with the vario showing all
sorts of lift possibilities, while the pilot chats on the radio. I see
those surges on the vario and push the mouse hard to one side. Now,
perhaps "turn the radio off" is extreme. It is potentially a good idea
to notify others of your predicament and imminent chance of landing
out. But then "I'm too busy to talk" might be a better idea, and focus
really hard on catching those scraps of lift, with accurate aggressive
thermaling and decent bank angles -- while of course also looking hard
at the fields below. There is a maxim, "don't leave any lift below X
feet," which applies too, and the pilot said as much at the end of the
flight. I have also suffered bouts of impatience in scratch
thermaling, and spent many pleasant hours in farmer's fields bemoaning
it afterwards.

John Cochrane

Judging by the angle of the sun, it' was quite late in the day and the
thernals would be getting weak. The pilot was probably tired and
hadn't quite changed gear into scratching mode. Add to that he is
trying to thermal, talk on the radio, calculate his final glide, and
pick fields, all at the same time. He never once completes a turn in
the lift he does encounter, so we can't tell whether a climb was
possible or not. I must admit that I have sometimes made the same
errors at the end of a flight, due to a combination of tiredness and
overload.

Yesterday I retrieved a friend who got a bit carried away by mid
October thermals in the UK and got into the same situation as Bruno.
He landed in about the biggest field I have ever seen about 4 miles
out, rather than risk a very marginal glide back to site.

Derek C

Bruno, please, please consider trimming your posts! There no value to
quoting all this - 259 lines - just to add a four line message! The only
thing worse (so far) is Derek's post.

Or at least put your message on top so it doesn't require digging all
the way to the bottom.

On 10/19/2010 10:56 AM, Bruno wrote:
On Oct 19, 11:35 am, Derek wrote:

On Oct 19, 5:04 pm, wrote:




On Oct 19, 7:44 am, wrote:



--
Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA (change ".netto" to ".us" to email me)
- "Transponders in Sailplanes - Feb/2010" also ADS-B, PCAS, Flarm http://tinyurl.com/yb3xywl
- "A Guide to Self-launching Sailplane Operation Mar/2004" Much of what you need to know tinyurl.com/yfs7tnz

On Oct 23, 5:33*am, Eric Greenwell wrote:
Bruno, please, please consider trimming your posts! There no value to
quoting all this - 259 lines - just to add a four line message! The only
thing worse (so far) is Derek's post.

Or at least put your message on top so it doesn't require digging all
the way to the bottom.


Where the text goes depends on which type of news group you post to.
Some default to the bottom and others to the top.

Derek C

On Oct 23, 7:56*am, Derek C wrote:

Where the text goes depends on which type of news group you post to.
Some default to the bottom and others to the top.

It is nothing to do with the group, and is all to do with the client
newsgroup reader. All I have come across allow either, most
allow the client to select their preference.

Before this gets diverted onto the usual war, please read
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style

On 10/22/2010 11:56 PM, Derek C wrote:
On Oct 23, 5:33 am, Eric wrote:

Bruno, please, please consider trimming your posts! There no value to
quoting all this - 259 lines - just to add a four line message! The only
thing worse (so far) is Derek's post.

Or at least put your message on top so it doesn't require digging all
the way to the bottom.


Where the text goes depends on which type of news group you post to.
Some default to the bottom and others to the top.

If you can't change your posting to the top, I hope you'll consider
trimming the reply to only the relevant lines. That's completely
adequate for a group of this nature, unlike some groups that need a
continuous record of replies to aid in troubleshooting software and
similar problems.

--
Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA (change ".netto" to ".us" to email me)
- "Transponders in Sailplanes - Feb/2010" also ADS-B, PCAS, Flarm http://tinyurl.com/yb3xywl
- "A Guide to Self-launching Sailplane Operation Mar/2004" Much of what you need to know tinyurl.com/yfs7tnz

I had no idea this was occurring. I use google groups and it does a
good job of trimming posts. Ignorance is bliss. newsgroup user
etiquette lesson learned. Will be better in future posts. I hope you
liked the video at least...

Take care,
Bruno -B4

If you can't change your posting to the top, I hope you'll consider
trimming the reply to only the relevant lines. That's completely
adequate for a group of this nature, unlike some groups that need a
continuous record of replies to aid in troubleshooting software and
similar problems.

--
Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA (change ".netto" to ".us" to email me)
- "Transponders in Sailplanes - Feb/2010" also ADS-B, PCAS, Flarmhttp://tinyurl.com/yb3xywl
- "A Guide to Self-launching Sailplane Operation Mar/2004" Much of what you need to know tinyurl.com/yfs7tnz

Thanks, Bruno.

I've always used a newsreader, and very rarely look at RAS on Google,
and hadn't thought about how it would be a different experience. A long
time ago, I had a newsreader that could be set to show only some of the
quoted text, but my current one doesn't have that option, so I get every
line. Trimming posts is a habit I acquired when dial-up was king, though
it doesn't have the download time and cost-saving utility now that it
did then.

On 10/23/2010 10:05 PM, Bruno wrote:
I had no idea this was occurring. I use google groups and it does a
good job of trimming posts. Ignorance is bliss. newsgroup user
etiquette lesson learned. Will be better in future posts. I hope you
liked the video at least...

Take care,
Bruno -B4


If you can't change your posting to the top, I hope you'll consider
trimming the reply to only the relevant lines. That's completely
adequate for a group of this nature, unlike some groups that need a
continuous record of replies to aid in troubleshooting software and


--
Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA (change ".netto" to ".us" to email me)
- "Transponders in Sailplanes - Feb/2010" also ADS-B, PCAS, Flarm http://tinyurl.com/yb3xywl
- "A Guide to Self-launching Sailplane Operation Mar/2004" Much of what you need to know tinyurl.com/yfs7tnz