Glider Near Crash on Final Glide: Instructor Reacts! 

Thanks Jonas, agreed I think it’s really important for people to show their mistakes. We all make them. We all do things we think are ok but actually might not be a great idea! Sharing means we can discuss and learn from these things. So thanks to Domas for sharing

The best instructors will always put their mistakes out there for people to learn from.

You have to respect his decision to share. It is a mark of a good pilot.

lietuvis?

@@thewafen763 tikrai taip

Well said!

congrats!

Congrats! I hope you fly safe!

Congratulation. You will never forget this date.

Awesome well done!

Congrats!

I agree completely. It is critical we share our mistakes and as you say, we all make them. And I agree with your suggestion, it’s likely the pilots natural instincts to open the brakes like normal took over. Thanks for taking the time to comment.

Thank You for comment !

Very well stated. We train so we react to the appropriate conditions despite our "instincts", which usually lead us into poor decision matrices. I feel like i pushed it too far when I've had to perform abbreviated landings or gotten off too low in massive lift, only to have it disappear and turn into massive sink on the turn-around. I'm glad I leave myself that margin, as I'd rather one less flight hour than encounter this type of low, negative margins return.

The only mistakes I made in competition is finnishing 300m to high . It's a matter of choice. I made another one we I was jounger . I got lost on the final leg then realised I was way too high . I opened the air brakes and finished crossing the line at 150 m and 130km/h with a Ka6. I then realised they had change the direction of landing . In place of making a 180° turn and land , I had to take the downwing leg . And on the downwind there was a dune higher than the landing strip and it was full of caravans and tents . I made a very scary low pass above the campground and was lucky ,after a 180° turn, to land safely with no airbrakes .

I think you're exactly right. In stressful situations our brains tell us we should be doing *something* and that may be true in a lot of circumstances, but with many modern problems and especially in very simple aircraft, sometimes you just have to put in the most efficient input and hold and hope it works out. Has caused a few serious accidents where it seems the pilot just wants to do...stuff. Very understandable and an easy place to see yourself. It worked out here fortunately.

Thanks for sharing!

Cheers!

Thanks Johan!

Thanks T!

Welcome aboard! Glad you like it. Cheers

Cheers!

Cheers

Thanks mate! Appreciate it

You are welcome!

I find the two most useful numbers when final gliding are the required glide ratio and the achieved glide ratio and have them displayed next to each other. Many pilots concentrate on the numerical margin (+800’ or whatever) but a constant margin provides a decreasing level of safety the further away you are. 800’ over a 0kt glide is OK at 20km but very marginal at 50km: 0.3kt of airmass sink will put you on the ground short of your goal.

Yeah exactly, the current glide ratio is nice, but changes too quickly to be useful for knowing if the whole glide is going as planned. The required glide ratio changes slowly over time to indicate how the whole glide is going. You could also just keep an eye on your height above or below final glide, but this is nice because it works on even the most basic instruments

Yeah I don’t disagree, decide which you prefer and stick to it

Hello, thanks for commenting Domas. And agreed we don’t know the full story from the video, but it did look too close for me. I’ve done my share of low glides too between trees, but make a real effort to identify when I’m pushing too close to the edge, and try to avoid doing it. Stay safe out there! And thanks for sharing the video.

Oh one question, why did you pull the brakes while you were over the trees still? Instead of waiting until you’re clear over the field?

@@PureGlide Actually in video it looks a bit closer than it was. Of course it was unnecessary risk, but at that moment I felt like I have too much energy and knew that I am landing opposite direction from others gliders and must be short.

Thanks I was wondering if you were trying to land short for some reason. Cheers

@@MrBerzulis I think you're in denial dude. Thank you for sharing.

Great points, thanks!

Cheers!

@@PureGlide Another one from the same source, just FYI :-) ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-OULQ1yMVclE.html&ab_channel=Domas%C5%BDostautas Pretty good learning what I ever don't want to do. :-)

I find best L/D speed is good in non thermal or weak conditions. After a great lift heavy sink will drag you down. More loss than gain.

Yeah it gets complicated Sid, because as Domas said sink will drag you down. You don't want to be caught going slowly in sink (which is what you find after hitting lift). Also depending on the wind and current air, there is an optimum 'speed to fly' which our computers can tell us.

Agreed! Cheers

Yeah during our contests we have a minimum finish height, so that you have time to land nicely. Plus pilots usually have their own finish height padding. Of course you could still get stuck on the way home and need to land out!

Yeah it’s definitely a whole topic! Cheers

Hopefully an upcoming topic, Tim! Hint, hint.

Thanks :)

Thanks Alterbbott! Yeah always good to be a bit conservative. You can always burn it off once you know you’re going to make it. Cheers!

Yeah not sure! Hopefully he comments here and gives some more details. Cheers

@@PureGlide more comments about my "miscalculation" is in my video description.

Yes, You are correct, the reason I find myself in that situation - my flight computer was very "optimistic" with arrival altitude (400m on 2.5MC) and I needed to burn that altitude. But It was set not to a center of a ring. The moment I've realised the situation there was very few options left and I was competing. Slowing down means go straight to an outlanding, as I was already going fast the best seemed to keep speed as I've expected sink between woods. Always had fields on my right side and the relief there is going down. After my wheel Is down - I knew that I am home already.

Thanks for that, yes we have been caught by a big circle before too :) our contests have a min finish height about 500 feet/150m so we still have height to get to the airfield!

@@PureGlide after that I’ve changed a size of a circle to 1km from 3km before. In sone scenarios Finish altitude doesnt mean that you gonna come back if you are flying 0.0MC

Agreed!

Yes great point!

Yeah exactly, for every disaster there will be a lot of mistakes we can learn from...

Haha eek

Yeah exactly cheers Brett!

You can cut your hair short, but you can’t cut it long.

Agreed! Save it for a safer dramatic ending.

It's also very important to not use the altimeter for landing. Judge it by the angle to your aiming point instead. After all if you outland at a random field, you won't know what the elevation is!

@@PureGlide my error wasn't in the circuit. And yes, I was taught to judge the circuit by looking at it. I only did three landings away from my home field 2 at other gliding clubs and 1 in a field less than 2 km from home. Those 2 km could have been 200 km with the progress I was making on that flight so I put down in a field as it was safer.

Haha

Yeah I would suggest safety maccready is a great idea too. I think it’s worth putting in a small safety margin as well, small enough to ignore it so you don’t try to do maths around it!

Yeah pretty much :)

Yeah agreed

Thanks! I actually support our PM, we just don’t have enough hospital capacity to let Covid run loose yet. So what would you do? Let the country’s health system be overwhelmed? Or keep up the lockdowns?

@@PureGlide ... your reply surprises me, the dear leaders have made the same claims in my own country which upon closer scrutiny have turned out to be overblown and misleading at best if not outright untrue. It's as though "they" have no confidence in the vaccines working, the claim that you can't pass on the wuflu if you're vaccinated is demonstrably false and the fact that the elites don't follow their own dictates is extremely telling. They seem very keen on expounding the rise in cases whilst saying nothing about the fall in number of deaths. Something is not adding up here, especially when you consider how restrictive they are when it comes to opposing arguments, why are so many medical staff refusing the jab ? How come we can't talk about it openly and honestly online ? But more than that it's the gleeful manner with which she delivers the bad news of introducing a two tier system for the plebs. I find that deeply unsettling and much else besides. For anyone who is a student of history it becomes readily apparent such dictates will do more harm than good as the ever decreasing death rates certainly do not justify the measures taken..... and of course any voices of concern or dissent are branded purveyors of mis-information and conspiracy theories. Naturally my favourite conspiracy theory is of course that the elites and the state would never lie or manipulate us as a means of gaining more power.... as has happened many times throughout history ;) Anyhow, I look forward to more flying videos from you even if we do agree to differ on this topic :)

LOL

I sure can: - Altimeters - not sure why it's a different starting position. Airspeeds can also be starting different positions. - AGL instead of ASL: Don't! You might land at another airfield so it's irrelevant. You need the ASL to be able to tell other pilots from other fields what height you are.

Yeah I deliberately didn’t mention safety MacCready, that could use its own video later!

Many years ago I picked a guy out of a nearby field, who had a bit of a reputation for not making it back. On the short drive home I enquired as to what had happened and he had hit a bit of bad air; he said he always set up the glide at Mc0 “to be on the safe side”. Problem identified!

@@edtheduck6219 doh!!! 🤣

Seems to me that rather than dialing back the MC setting if things aren't going well, making a decision to find another climb would be a better alternative, if that option is available.

Yeah I’m no expert at clipping trees but I suspect that’s not how you’re meant to do it. Maybe try a hedge trimmer?

@@PureGlide No, that wasn't the intention :-)

Agreed, Thanks Richard!

Agreed! once the decision to land has been made, it's critical to stick to it. Cheers

You need to use a glide computer to work out the optimum glide, but as a rough glide 50 knots or so is best glide, but going a bit faster say 60-70 knots should be fine! But it depends on a LOT of factors, that’s why we use glide computers to help

Thanks Glen, yeah I should update it! I would love to get one…

Hi yeah so the glide ratio box doesn't take into account wind at all, it's just pure geometry to your target, except it does take into account your safety height. But the arrival height and glide computer boxes takes into account lots of factors including: - Your current McCready setting i.e. how fast you're going to fly and how much drag you're going to induce. - The estimated wind strength and direction. - How dirty your wings are. - Your water ballast and weight. - Safety McCready or Safety height added. BUT your instrument doesn't know what the wind is actually doing up ahead potentially, unless you've flown through that area recently. So no guarantees that it'll be right. However the dumb glide ratio boxes are still useful. What you can do is compare your actual current glide ratio to the required glide ratio. The 'current' glide ratio does change quite a lot depending if you hit good air or not, so it's really only useful in still air. HOWEVER what does work all the time is looking at the required glide ratio, and comparing that over time. If it starts off at 40:1, and slowly gets worse over time e.g. 42:1, then 45:1, you know your glide is going badly. If it improves over time, then you're likely to make it! So I tend to use that as a rough guide of 'are things going as expected' on my glide. The actual glide ratio number doesn't matter. Hope that helps! Might make a video about it one day...

"It will be fine until it's not" is a saying of mine that fits here. I am a powered GA pilot and when the first landing spot turned out to not be the landing spot I got really concerned. Wow, what a nail-biter!!

Maybe!

Hi it’s a great question. What we do is: - phone someone back at base with our coordinates (or radio relay if needed) - they come get us with our vehicle and trailer - we find the farmer and obtain permission to drive onto their property! - wait around for ages - pull the glider apart and put it in the trailer when the crew arrives - tell tall tales about what went wrong on the drive home :)

Agreed!

Yeah probably opening the brakes is the best thing to avoid until you're over the field in this case!

I never putting gear down If I am not sure that I am safe, same with spoilers... But yeah, some adrenaline kicked in and and I felt like on the ground too early

True!

Not sure sorry! A link to the original video, and thus the pilot's channel is in the description. Cheers

Well you have to put your gear down at some stage before landing :)

Hi when you see how fast my glider motor goes when I run it, I'd suggest no that probably won't work :) plenty of electric and petrol based engines on gliders that will help

Yeah although you probably wouldn’t try this in that case!

You have to set up your final glide acording to the performance of the glider you are flying. The "imagine if scenario" you are setting up has very little relevans to the actual case. It is not an ASK13 and hence it should not be flown like such a thing. That being said, I think his margins were way to low, as he should not have encountered much sink before he had ended in those trees. Furthermore I see no reason to pull the airbrakes and thereby reduce the margin even more in order to land as short as he did, when he already was close to the trees and had plenty of runway infront of him

They cost a lot of money, use a lot of power, and most gliders don't ever fly in cloud. Only daytime VFR. Many countries you aren't allowed to. In New Zealand and the UK we are allowed to, so some gliders do have them here.

Yeah, bit dodgy to pull that out low level, check my upcoming video for comment on that!

@@PureGlide I remember watching one of your videos before, you need to dive to get the propeller on the engine spinning to get the engine started

Yeah would have been a lot less dramatic with less air brake. Speed was ok as he was over the trees. Still should have landed earlier!

Sadly I received a note to say this pilot was killed in a mid air collision :(

Yeah may have been, but you do have to choose an out-landing without anything in the way of the approach path. Often you are looking out to the side rather than what's directly ahead when choosing a field. You can't see what's directly in front and under you. And then you can at least do a right or left base circuit into the field.

Interesting!

@@PureGlide I just found out that I have to retract my comment. There was a finish ring but no min. altitude, which makes you wonder why there was a finish ring in the first place. I've flown contests with a finish ring and a minimim altitude and it makes for a very relaxing final glide, knowing that the worst thing that can happen is a straight in and penalty points.

Yeah that makes more sense. We always have a min height of 500ft on our 3km finish circles

Yeah you can expect sink at any altitude. It’s usually not too bad low because it can’t go though the ground :)

Yeah turned out all OK :)

Yeah I didn’t cover it because you get into MacCready theory to cover “best speed to fly” properly! A big rabbit hole to go down :)

@@PureGlide you should cover it sometime with demonstrations

Yeah, that requires planning so might take a while :)

Yeah I suspect you’re right!

So true

It is very useful! But it costs money, and you can always land in fields instead safely

Cheers Dwight

@@PureGlide Cheers, mate

The pen is mightier than the sword

Yip!

Yeah, the pilot has added some comments on some comments below, so you can check out his views

@@PureGlide, right - after planting my "shouldn't-have" comment I skimmed through the previous comments and saw that, by pure blind luck, I happened to lean towards the correct 'expert' explanation. Thank you for your content, it allows me a glimpse into the world of high-performance gliding , something I was never in a position to enter (except via Hang Gliding).

Awesome glad you’re finding it interesting! One day we’ll drag you to the dark side

Congratulations you’re the second person to notice out of five thousand :)

​@@PureGlide Maybe his final glide was low because of all the drag after he forgot to stow it away...

Haha, congrats on being number two to notice

The glider generates more drag at higher speeds, I’ll make a separate video about this at some stage soon! Cheers

Curious about this distinction as well. Private pilot here with no glider rating but some time spent soaring. I think of sink as a level pitch decent that occurs when lift component drops below a certain threshold due to airspeed. In a powered aircraft I reduce descent rate by adding power. But I could also change the descent rate by altering the glide slope and pitching down to convert altitude into airspeed/energy. Is it correct to use "sink" and "descent rate" interchangeably as in the intro? If he was hot on final could he not just pitch up a little to reconvert airspeed to glide distance? The energy gives you options but if you're truly sinking it means low on airspeed and lift generation. I ask humbly because the gliding world may use different lexicon and I'm just a spectator.

I’m obviously joking

😂 haha yeah