Use of drag chutes

The accidents in Namibia which totaled gliders and claimed a life deserve more respect than that offered by our friend "Fred Drift".
Hey, it's fun to land with a drag chute. I regret never trying ASW17B 15 meter drag chute landings. At 20m it was huge fun.
Jim

Have done a bunch of landings with the tail chute in my 301 Libelle. Deploy on high downwind abeam intended touchdown point. Requires quite the nose down attitude to maintain airspeed. Modulate glide path with divebrakes. Be ready to jettison if coming up short. Yep, it's fun.

I used to fly an early model Janus back in the late 80s. I used the chute a lot and it was great fun and quite an effective aid when landing. I even thermaled for a short while with a Std Cirrus one day when mucking about before joining high for downwind lol

Really loved that glider and missed it when it went to the Wellington Gliding Club

:-) Colin

I tried to use the tail chute twice in my H-301 Libelle. First time was during an off field landing, I pulled the chute and stuffed the nose down...........next thing I knew I was scooting through the weeds doing 80. The chute hadn't deployed! Next time I gave it a try was a landing at Winnemucca, Nv. I popped the chute on down-wind and soon found I was going to be way short, so I pulled the jettison handle..............you guessed it, it didn't jettison! I made the runway, but was a half mile from my desired stopping point. The chute worked fine on the ground, before and after both incidents. My conclusion, unreliable and not necessary in a ship that had landing flaps and dive brakes.
FWIW,
JJ

At 14:46 07 February 2016, wrote:
I tried to use the tail chute twice in my H-301 Libelle. First time
was
dur=
ing an off field landing, I pulled the chute and stuffed the nose
down.....=
......next thing I knew I was scooting through the weeds doing 80.
The
chute=
hadn't deployed! Next time I gave it a try was a landing at
Winnemucca,
N=
v. I popped the chute on down-wind and soon found I was going
to be way
sho=
rt, so I pulled the jettison handle..............you guessed it, it
didn't
=
jettison! I made the runway, but was a half mile from my desired
stopping
p=
oint. The chute worked fine on the ground, before and after both
incidents.=
My conclusion, unreliable and not necessary in a ship that had
landing
fla=
ps and dive brakes.
FWIW,
JJ

I had a Slingsby Kestrel which had flaps, 2 lots and airbrakes. The
best that could be said about the airbrakes is they made a nice
noise. It also had a tail parachute which was very effective, if it
deployed. The tail parachute was in a shaped box on the bottom of
the rudder. The technique was to select the deployment and then
waggle the rudder from side to side to encourage it to deploy. This
worked most of the time. I used to start an approach where I
intended to use the parachute from 600ft. If it did not deploy I had
enough height to do a 360 deg turn on finals to loose the height.

The ASW17B (17045) has a belly chute. One day Mark Grubb and I took turns landing it with the chute. We intentionally packed it with less care each time, and it always deployed. This was a fun test prior to Mark's rebuild of the ASW12.
The technique was pull at 600'AGL on short final. Woomph! Nose down, pull the double-surface airbrakes out fully. Laughter! Gently ease back on the stick just before your feet hit the runway. Normal touchdown. As it was a paved runway, we jettisoned the chute shortly after touchdown to reduce wear on the cover attached to the crown of the chute. The loss of drag is quite apparent.
Unfortunately we lost the piece of the belly (swivel clip failure) off the end of the runway before trying the drag chute at 15m span.
The 17B has a lot of handles at the bottom of the panel. Best not to adjust the pedals without looking at the handle.
Jim

My Open Cirrus had a drogue chute in the tail. I used it once just to practice using it, and then it saved me from a broken glider on a very very short field landing when I had to use it for real. Don't try to deploy one unless you are over your landing spot, it's damn near a straight down ride once you deploy it. You really have to push the nose down too maintain airspeed with it deployed, but the landing isn't difficult to do, its just an unusual attitude.

SF

Originally Posted by

I tried to use the tail chute twice in my H-301 Libelle. First time was during an off field landing, I pulled the chute and stuffed the nose down...........next thing I knew I was scooting through the weeds doing 80. The chute hadn't deployed! Next time I gave it a try was a landing at Winnemucca, Nv. I popped the chute on down-wind and soon found I was going to be way short, so I pulled the jettison handle..............you guessed it, it didn't jettison! I made the runway, but was a half mile from my desired stopping point. The chute worked fine on the ground, before and after both incidents. My conclusion, unreliable and not necessary in a ship that had landing flaps and dive brakes.
FWIW,
JJ

I used the Janus chute on most landings to be really familiar with it's characteristics/quirks before I ever got to use it in an outlanding situation.

I only ever suffered 2 failures and both were at my home field. Once I ran the lever forward through the detent and inadvertently jettisoned it lol, and the second time was deploying it while dumping water and it not surprisingly it didn't inflate properly. Both good lessons learnt cheaply

:-) Colin

I was looking at buying a nimbus 2 which had a drogue chute and the owner told a great story: Seems that when the ship was new he first flew it in Germany and the locals warned him about how effective the chute was and how and when to deploy and release it. Well he had gone on a xc and was returning late to the field with all the locals down and watching his pattern and landing. As he was turning base to final and high he deployed the chute. "It was amazing how fast I was coming down finishing the turn to final I realized I wouldn't make the field so pulled the lever back again to release the chute, but it wouldn't move! I realized that I had a candy bar in the pocket behind the handle and started smashing it as hard as I could to give room to pull the release handle back. Well when I looked up I was going to hit the fence on the approach end of the runway, I flared hard and just cleared the fence and rolled up, drogue still attached, in front of the hangar with all of the Germans standing out front clapping. Claiming that was the best use of the drogue chute they had ever seen!"

He said he never told them the true story or the fact he had to clean out his draws afterwards

When I had a Kestrel 19 back in the eighties I used the tail chute for every outlanding with complete reliability - deploy on curved base/final leg and point the nose where you want to land - BUT:

I was sole owner and removed the chute in its box after every flight and took it home, repacked it, and kept it in the airing cupboard to make sure it was dry.

The Kestrel has a little spring loaded plunger that pushes the chute box down and free and I always made sure it was lubricated and that box would drop away freely when I re-fitted it during rigging.

The Kestrel had a proper little Otfur-like release for the chute cables so I was confident that it would release if necessary - but I never had to release it.