Groundloop accident at the Senior Contest

On Wednesday, March 17, 2021 at 6:43:10 PM UTC-7, Walt Connelly wrote:
'Ron Branham[_2_ Wrote:
;1040218']On Tuesday, March 16, 2021 at 1:51:11 PM UTC-5, John Good
wrote:-
At around 12:54 today, Thomas Johnson (V12 - MiniNumbus) was injured in
a takeoff groundloop accident. He was airlifted to an Orlando hospital,
where he'll be met by his wife.
-

This is what happened to Tom Johnson. V12. One of our club members is
Tom’s partner in the Mini-Nimbus. He posted this on our email site as
we are all anxious to hear about Tom’s status.

“V12 has a CG hook which is less directionally stable during the
initial takeoff. Apparently the left wing dropped to the ground maybe
due to propwash from the towplane. The left wingtip on the ground
turned the glider about 30 degrees to the East where it departed the
runway, crossed the service road and collided with a truck that one of
the other contestants had parked next to the runway in violation of
contest procedures. The glider submarined the body of the truck.�
Please keep Tom in your prayers a quick recovery, and full recovery.

Ron Branham
Best wishes to Tom for a complete recovery. It should be the
responsibility of EVERYONE at an event such as this to look for
infractions that could inhibit the safety of the launch. Whether it be
something over which one could trip to something that might result in a
fatality the contest director, launch crew, flag man/woman/person, tow
pilot, VP, manager and airport dog should all be aware of and enforcing
the rules. I would imagine that submarining the truck was what resulted
in the pilot's injuries. An avoidable situation for sure.

Walt Connelly
Former Tow Pilot
Now Happy Helicopter Pilot




--
Walt Connelly

I worked for many years at a National Laboratory, first in the 70's then in 2000's. The safety culture was a total turn around in that time period. One simple concept was that ANYONE could stop an experiment, process, procedure, etc. for a safety issue. The issue would be investigated and corrected before work could resume w/o repercussions to the person reporting the problem.

Tom