Video of off-field landing from cockpit

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...Id=-1117266168

Thanks for watching and hope you enjoy.

Bruno Vassel IV - B4
http://www.youtube.com/user/bviv

On Oct 18, 12:03*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

Nice installation Bruno. 3.5 miles, dang! I think my closest this
year was 3.3 miles. also had a 4ish mile on the return from a Diamond
Goal attempt. Looks like you even got the obligatory lift at pattern
height that just might let you drift back to the airport if only you
can hang on for a little while longer. Looks like plenty of great
landout options in the valley there though. I also noticed that my
Cherokee II landout video was second on the "suggested" list to the
right. Thanks for doing the video thing, its a great learning tool!

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.
Also,
as Doug Jacobs likes to say, if you can do anything else while
thermalling,
you're not thinking about thermalling hard enough. You can turn it
back
on after you land and tell everyone you're all right.
2. pick the field while you still have room to change your mind, and
when
you can see it properly. You picked a field ahead of yourself a ways,
and lucked
out that it was a good field (it was into the sun, too, so it had to
be hard to
see it well). I tried that last year and landed in chest-high barley
(ouch).
3. pick the field at a more reasonable altitude. 300 feet (100m for
the rest
of the world) is more like the altitude you should be turning base to
final.
It's a little hard to see, but it seems you had good fields under you
at 800 feet,
and you had a good chance to look at them while you were scratching
(which is a good exception to DJ's rule).

There's a bunch of good presentations on off field landings (and lots
of
other great soaring stuff) at Doug Jacob's collection of stuff for
the
US Team camps:
http://www.dragonnorth.com/djpresentations/index.html

-- Matt

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.....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.
Also,
as Doug Jacobs likes to say, if you can do anything else while
thermalling,
you're not thinking about thermalling hard enough. *You can turn it
back
on after you land and tell everyone you're all right.
2. pick the field while you still have room to change your mind, and
when
you can see it properly. *You picked a field ahead of yourself a ways,
and lucked
out that it was a good field (it was into the sun, too, so it had to
be hard to
see it well). *I tried that last year and landed in chest-high barley
(ouch).
3. pick the field at a more reasonable altitude. *300 feet (100m for
the rest
of the world) is more like the altitude you should be turning base to
final.
It's a little hard to see, but it seems you had good fields under you
at 800 feet,
and you had a good chance to look at them while you were scratching
(which is a good exception to DJ's rule).

There's a bunch of good presentations on off field landings (and lots
of
other great soaring stuff) at Doug Jacob's collection of stuff for
the
US Team camps:http://www.dragonnorth.com/djpresentations/index.html

-- Matt

Also, I don't want to sound negative in all this. You did do stuff
right, too --
checklist, take the safe option to go into the field (rather than
stretching
too far), and local field knowledge. As you said on the radio, you
were very
close to glide slope, but you broke off while you still had time to
maneuver.
There's too many NTSB reports of pilots just hoping for that last 80
feet to
materialize...

-- Matt

On Oct 18, 7:08*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.
Also,
as Doug Jacobs likes to say, if you can do anything else while
thermalling,
you're not thinking about thermalling hard enough. *You can turn it
back
on after you land and tell everyone you're all right.
2. pick the field while you still have room to change your mind, and
when
you can see it properly. *You picked a field ahead of yourself a ways,
and lucked
out that it was a good field (it was into the sun, too, so it had to
be hard to
see it well). *I tried that last year and landed in chest-high barley
(ouch).
3. pick the field at a more reasonable altitude. *300 feet (100m for
the rest
of the world) is more like the altitude you should be turning base to
final.
It's a little hard to see, but it seems you had good fields under you
at 800 feet,
and you had a good chance to look at them while you were scratching
(which is a good exception to DJ's rule).

There's a bunch of good presentations on off field landings (and lots
of
other great soaring stuff) at Doug Jacob's collection of stuff for
the
US Team camps:http://www.dragonnorth.com/djpresentations/index.html

-- Matt

Also, I don't want to sound negative in all this. *You did do stuff
right, too --
checklist, take the safe option to go into the field (rather than
stretching
too far), and local field knowledge. *As you said on the radio, you
were very
close to glide slope, but you broke off while you still had time to
maneuver.
There's too many NTSB reports of pilots just hoping for that last 80
feet to
materialize...

-- Matt- Hide quoted text -

- 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

- 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

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

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.
Also,
as Doug Jacobs likes to say, if you can do anything else while
thermalling,
you're not thinking about thermalling hard enough. *You can turn it
back
on after you land and tell everyone you're all right.
2. pick the field while you still have room to change your mind, and
when
you can see it properly. *You picked a field ahead of yourself a ways,
and lucked
out that it was a good field (it was into the sun, too, so it had to
be hard to
see it well). *I tried that last year and landed in chest-high barley
(ouch).
3. pick the field at a more reasonable altitude. *300 feet (100m for
the rest
of the world) is more like the altitude you should be turning base to
final.
It's a little hard to see, but it seems you had good fields under you
at 800 feet,
and you had a good chance to look at them while you were scratching
(which is a good exception to DJ's rule).

There's a bunch of good presentations on off field landings (and lots
of
other great soaring stuff) at Doug Jacob's collection of stuff for
the
US Team camps:http://www.dragonnorth.com/djpresentations/index.html

-- Matt

Also, I don't want to sound negative in all this. *You did do stuff
right, too --
checklist, take the safe option to go into the field (rather than
stretching
too far), and local field knowledge. *As you said on the radio, you
were very
close to glide slope, but you broke off while you still had time to
maneuver.
There's too many NTSB reports of pilots just hoping for that last 80
feet to
materialize...

-- Matt- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Fun video of pleasant ending to a flight that almost made it- sorta.
Bruno really was 500 to 600 low to make the field if one allows a
decent safety margin. I get the impression that he might have gone for
it if he was a couple hundred feet higher.
The sink he sees when leaving his last "thermal" shows why this can be
folly.
The concern I have is giving the impression that this last few minutes
is how we should fly such
that others use this as an example.
Everything is in his favor. Benign terrain, not much wind, not a lot
of sink(or lift).
I would bet a tighter circle with a bit more flap would have improved
his escape possibilities. Looked like
he was bouncing off bubbles without trying to tighten up in best lift.
That said, without feeling the seat, he could have been doing it
quite well.
All that said, deciding to quit at 3 or 400 ft when it hasn't worked
all the way down, is from my experience, a poor
thing to do for a couple reasons. First surprises happen and options
become very limited. Second, the positive outcome makes
the pilot comfortable with doing it, leading to lower and lower
quitting points. I've pointed this out to a number of my competition
friends over the years. 2 proved me right within a year by crashing
with low decision to land being a significant factor.
BTW- another observation- How many times does he scan outside the
circle? I know camera angle is deceiving.
Enough preaching.
Nice video
Fun to watch
Don't use as a training film.
UH

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.
Also,
as Doug Jacobs likes to say, if you can do anything else while
thermalling,
you're not thinking about thermalling hard enough. *You can turn it
back
on after you land and tell everyone you're all right.
2. pick the field while you still have room to change your mind, and
when
you can see it properly. *You picked a field ahead of yourself a ways,
and lucked
out that it was a good field (it was into the sun, too, so it had to
be hard to
see it well). *I tried that last year and landed in chest-high barley
(ouch).
3. pick the field at a more reasonable altitude. *300 feet (100m for
the rest
of the world) is more like the altitude you should be turning base to
final.
It's a little hard to see, but it seems you had good fields under you
at 800 feet,
and you had a good chance to look at them while you were scratching
(which is a good exception to DJ's rule).

There's a bunch of good presentations on off field landings (and lots
of
other great soaring stuff) at Doug Jacob's collection of stuff for
the
US Team camps:http://www.dragonnorth.com/djpresentations/index.html

-- Matt

Also, I don't want to sound negative in all this. *You did do stuff
right, too --
checklist, take the safe option to go into the field (rather than
stretching
too far), and local field knowledge. *As you said on the radio, you
were very
close to glide slope, but you broke off while you still had time to
maneuver.
There's too many NTSB reports of pilots just hoping for that last 80
feet to
materialize...

-- Matt- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Fun video of pleasant ending to a flight that almost made it- sorta.
Bruno really was 500 to 600 low to make the field if one allows a
decent safety margin. I get the impression that he might have gone for
it if he was a couple hundred feet higher.
The sink he sees when leaving his last "thermal" shows why this can be
folly.
The concern I have is giving the impression that this last few minutes
is how we should fly such
that others use this as an example.
Everything is in his favor. Benign terrain, not much wind, not a lot
of sink(or lift).
I would bet a tighter circle with a bit more flap would have improved
his escape possibilities. Looked like
he was bouncing off bubbles without trying to tighten up in best lift.
That said, without feeling the seat, he could have been doing it
quite well.
All that said, deciding to quit at 3 or 400 ft when it hasn't worked
all the way down, is from my experience, a poor
thing to do for a couple reasons. First surprises happen and options
become very limited. Second, the positive outcome makes
the pilot comfortable with doing it, leading to lower and lower
quitting points. I've pointed this out to a number of my competition
friends over the years. 2 proved me right within a year by crashing
with low decision to land being a significant factor.
BTW- another observation- How many times does he scan outside the
circle? I know camera angle is deceiving.
Enough preaching.
Nice video
Fun to watch
Don't use as a training film.
UH

Thanks everyone for the comments so far - both positive and negative.
Here are some more insights from the pilot's perspective...

I agree with pretty much everything you all said. Landouts are most
often the result of poor decisions, poor flying and missed
opportunities. I am guilty of all three of these on this flight.
This video is a perfect example of being low on final glide close to
home and really wanting to make it. When I am 80 miles out from home
and down to 1,500 ft believe me I am circling over a field and have
gear down by 600-800 ft and in a landing circuit, HOWEVER, when you
are a few miles from home and on final glide the temptation to keep
moving forward when you are over lots of good fields is incredibly
strong. Looking back now knowing that I did land out I would of
course picked a field and landed as soon as I was dropping out of the
thermal and into sink. I wanted to share this video because it shows
giving into temptation and continuing on to try to find something to
get home when you are under glide with no margins and don't have a
chance at making it. Again, please give a little bit of credit as it
was done over almost all landable fields.

The fish eye lens really distorted my face and it was hard to see how
much I was turning my head. I had my final field picked out at around
600 ft which sounds low but I had another field picked out before I
could have turned and flow back to. Yes I didn't put the gear down
until 300 ft but the field was picked out well before. Please note I
flew almost a downwind to the field as I was trying to get home that
was NOT looking into the sun during the field selection so I was able
to get a good view of it as some have suggested did not happen. That
said, had I spent 5 minutes circling over it looking before landing it
would have been even safer.

My poor attempts at the last save at 800 ft: No excuses - bad
thermalling. I was surprised when I looked back at the video how
shallow I was thermalling. Please take my word for it and from some
of my friends who fly with me that I do like to thermal at 45% or even
more normally. I think that being so low I experienced an optical
illusion with the bank angle compared to the horizon sight picture as
well as just the desire not to get too steep so close to the ground.
I just was not aware I was circling so shallow of a bank angle. I
agree that had I thermalled correctly there might have been a better
chance at a save. That's what I love about this sport - there's
always room for improvement!!!

As for chatting on the radio: I was fat dumb and happy and had no idea
I would be landing in a field anytime soon. I really thought I would
pull it out. Again, looking back I should have spent the few brain
cells I have on tightening up the circle and not chatting with my
friend.

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

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.