God save. It brought out the memories; I was sucked by Cb while paragliding, back in 97.in Croatia. Reached 6500m, ascending at the rate of 20m/s with a collapsed glider (horseshoe, maintained by my legs inserted in A-lines, pulling it down...since I lost the strength in my arms to do that). I clearly remember the blackness, thunders, flashes...hail, and vertigo. The wind was tossing me around with the relative speed to the ground in excess of 120km/h...in different directions. At 6000 I was covered in ice. It lasted for 40min. By the grace of God, after "chewing me up", the cloud "spit me" out 28km from the starting point, into the side of mountain Učka. Eventually, I was able to land...moving backward due to strong headwind...and successfully collapsed the glider in time, not to be dragged around. I consider that day to be my second birthday. No serious injuries...just some bruises and frost bites. You reminded me of all that. Blue skies! Btw; change the music!!
For the Hang Pilots out there. My instructor long ago have think about this problem , studied. For the ones that have been in this critical situation prevention is the best option...but when shit happens ( almost always pilot fault) the procedure is 2/3 turns to one side , then revert for the other side with 2/3 turns more. The centrifugal+the change in direction will spiral the glider down in the (al) most lifting air you can find. Cheers fly safe. Ps- I have been in this situation twice...once was a CB in a competition ( stupid old flying days) climbing 600 meters( 2000 feet) inside the cloud with no visibility artificial horizon..nothing.
I feel that here's the right place to share one thing that I learned from Manfred Ruhmer (Icaro 2000): for exiting a spiral, pull the bar and do an outwards turn. The pulling is important. Great job scaping that big cloud! 👏
That profound bit of wisdom should be tattooed on your hand. Do everything while you can still see as soon as you lose your eyesight you're done in any kind of flight like this. Some people just use a small lightweight ball compass pick a heading. I saw one person comment that they had a friend that went paragliding and every time he went he got sucked up in the clouds and flew around for a long time and then he went home. There's not a lot to run into in a cloud.
It is not only a paraglider problem. Some early plastic gliders had none or insufficiënt speed brakes. Diving brings very high speeds, with the danger of wing collaps, or flutter. Avoid!
I paralleled a cloud once as a student pilot, fairly innocent puffy cumulus. I flew safely off to the side in visual conditions and tried to climb up high enough to fly over it in a single-engine Cessna. The top was only around 4,000' feet when I started. The higher I climbed, the faster the cloud climbed above me - I was witnessing the birth of a towering cumulus which would soon become a CB. I gave up at around 8,000' and went home, keeping an eye on the cloud. It eventually grew into the flight levels and turned into a cumulonimbus as it blew east of the area not long after I landed. The updrafts inside of it would easily have exceeded the ability of a piston single or piston twin to keep from ascending without exceeding Vne, can't imagine facing a similar situation in a hang glider.
had the same problem in an ultra light a few weeks ago, a challenger 2. had some minor puffy cumulus around so I headed out on a cross country for home. 10 min after take off I was on heading and watching a grey cell develop behind me. soon I had a bit of a ceiling above me. suddenly I was climbing about 500ft a min and couldn't stop. I was just starting to think dammit im going IFR and don't have the instruments. I got hit with a micro burst like a freight train that pushed me into a descent that I knew id never out climb. I used power and dove away from it. lost about 1000ft in what seemed like 5 seconds, suddenly I had the ground approaching and was still being pushed toward it. it let go and I recovered with about 150 AGL. I scooted back to the field, landed on the second try and only after I was out of the plane did I get scared... 20 or so minutes later we had a towering cumulus... still having talks with myself regarding what happened...
@Trius Oh hell no.. Everything in moderation. You can get flipped upside down in a heartbeat and tumble like a leaf when thrown over the front of your speed bar. You CANNOT get back over it and are stuck in a death dive from there on. All you can hope to do is throw your reserve parachute at that point and hope for the best.
There is the story of "El loco". He disconnected from the glider, was falling until he could see tthe earth and pulled the chute (not build for that). Survived. Those at Lago de Maggiore have been not so lucky.
Any idea, why you kept spiraling up,realizing that a big cloud was waiting above you? How do you read your vario? Are you guessing? Buddy, I hope you do not get hurt one day!
0:40 "SHIT I AM SUCKED BY A BIG BLACK" a 'big black' what....Bear, wrestler, barman, bar lady?? Dude looks like you had a lot of things happening at once up there besides the flying - hey each to their own I say
Always, always know the wind direction at altitude, and mark it in your brain, marking it on your compas in degrees. Adjust for conditions. If you are getting sucked up, pull in with vg on about half, and always fly in a straight line, as level as possible, in the OPPOSITE direction the cloud is going, and you will eventually fly into the blue. Big big mistake spiraling down as you almost exceeded the vne, and broke your glider. You almost had to throw your chute, hoping to God you remembered to do a fresh re pack..... Been there, done this, and survived also. Cudos...
manometre Here is a more mild flight than yours, close to suck up. But, it was the only cloud in the sky. Very strong lift though, 1800 ft per min spikes, 900 ft per min sink....about 4000 ft. I had the bar stuffed at the end as I ran away from the cloud, and I was still climbing!!! Enjoy!
Best advice, fly in a straight line. Up in the Welsh black mountains flying in England 1980, cloudy. A wave of hail heading towards me, the ground too far away. When it hit i could just about see my hands lasted about 10 minutes, but eventually burst out and the sun came out. Was strangely calm but thought i was dead..Radical manoeuvres i reckon i might have been.
-15m/s, tu as mis la pression, manometre ! Je crois que je n'ai jamais dépassé -12m/s et ce pas très longtemps. Il y a des moments où je me sentais écrasé dans son harnais. Tu as dépassé le FL115, c'est cramé pour la CFD ! Le ciel te tienne en joie !
Almost got towed into a cloud once at 5k, 3 ring twisted up the wrist line and couldn't pull release pin. Tow driver saw the problem, stopped, tow line slackened enough to flip it by hand. Washed my shorts...all good !
Wow, that like to dislike ratio is brutal. Im betting most people clicked on this video because with the title what it is, they thought they were gonna see loss of life or whatever......so they're disliking because the guy made it through. Thats very discouraging. 😒🤔
@@manometre ah thanks for the information that’s very interesting! i wondered why my ex-wife used to say it all the time! guess there was an innocent explanation this whole time!
Every time I think how I'd like to do that I see a video like this, and remember something I experienced, then I change my mind. Years ago I saw some hang gliders outside Denver CO, right along I-70 there's a little hill/mountain, I THINK they called it Green Mtn, but don't hold me to that, so I went up to watch them. Got talking to a couple, said I'd love to do that but couldn't really afford it. They said I should have been the the day before, a guy gave away his glider for free. Of course I asked why... They said the guy was rather new, and he had a glider with a 3:1 ratio, and he wanted more, so he bought a 5:1 wing, thinking 2 feet wouldn't make that much difference. He was SO wrong! He got caught in updraft under a cloud, and they said he had the nose pointed straight down but he was still sucked up. THREE HOURS LATER he landed, put the glider on its nose, un-harnessed himself, and said "Anyone who want that %$#&*@ can have it, I quit!" and left.
C'est comme en moto , un gars voit quelqu'un rouler tranquillement sur la route les cheveux à l'air . Il dit moi aussi je veux .Il passe son permis s'achète une moto et lors de sa première sortie une voiture lui coupe la route et l'envoi à l'hôpital . Il a dit "quiconque veut cette merde peut l'avoir , j'arrête ! Cela fait + de 40 ans que je pratique ce sport , un jour j'arrêterais ...... le plus tard possible
just for clarification . . . . .is the hang glider pilot there attempting to descend but hes getting pushed up ? , what is the never - - exceed speed of a hang glider ? , ,,
A diving spiral in the goo has potential to overspeed the glider and exceed G loads resulting in an in-flight break up & possibly even a failure of the parachute. This may be controversial, but a stall spin maneuver might be a better choice. This is what pilots used to do before there was complex attitude indicators in airplanes. The bar position in a spin remains constant, taking the guesswork out of trying to figure out your attitude whilst flying in the goo. The direction of flight (rotation & decent) also remain constant provided the cloud you are in is not so big that the sucking action exceeds the decent rate. In that case your kind of fucked no matter what you do... I will say this, spins are an incredibly dangerous maneuver that when coupled with moderate turbulence can result in a tumble. Here is the rub, I would rather tumble in a fairly low speed & low G maneuver such as a spin vs a high speed high G diving spiral.
I’m a paraglider pilot and have never hang glided so please excuse my lack of knowledge on the subject but couldn’t you have just put it into a straight dive as you where getting sucked into the cloud to avoid having to spiral? I definitely want to learn to hang glide at some point.
Vaya... me he "acojonado" solo de ver cómo salías de la nube...dentro de ella no se apreciaba muy bien que estabas girando tan deprisa..... me alegro de que no ocurriera nada. Ser atrapado dentro de nubes es un mal negocio para vuelos sin la instrumentación adecuada... Por cierto, me ha parecido que "luchabas" constantemente con la visera del casco (que era tintada) y las gafas de sol....Cuídate. Un saludo.
Spins are not even required for a pilots license because it is so dangerous and scary. Very happy you made it out of this death spiral. Hope it never happens again but is this SOP for getting out of a cloud thermal? I assumed thermals were a good thing. No..?
What a video! Is it very dangerous to fly a HG at 3.5km? The view is almost space-like, I'd love to see it for myself. If something happened (spin/stall) and you threw a chute, would it have carried you safely from the ground or would the height introduced complications (too huge a speed for the chute to deal with, for instance)? I'm a newb, only thinking about getting into HGing. Did you have trouble breathing up there/were you cold? 2:23 moment is funny, can see a sailplane flying by waay below. Is that mass of water at 1:52 a sea or a lake? Wonder how a sea would look like from that height. PS I personally liked the music, it creates an atmosphere. Never understood those people who only want 'wind&vario', I find that beeping hella annoying. Oh, and what HG are you flying? Is it rigid-wing or flex-wing?
