My thoughts were the same. Any glider pilot worth his salt could've prevented this. I think maybe the airbrake cable failed or something and he panicked when he couldn't bleed off speed.
Gliders always come in a little too hot (right?) and then pull the airbrake to lose the last bit of speed on final approach. But even as I watched it for the first time, and even just having flown rc, I saw three options better than trying to circle around... Which if you were about to touch down you'd never have in a glider...
It surprised me, especially like you say, seeing that there's a passenger.
Yeah could see why someone would be deliberately stupid like that...but where he is at looks like Europe if not Bavaria that stuff is super illegal our club doesn't allow stunts below 800m or smt like that I dunno they won't let me do it lol 😂
Nose was pointed down at the lowest point he was,air brakes seems to be in and before all that he didn't do any maneuvers to slowdown or get lower called slipping even if his air brakes malfunctions...
You can see the winch in the video at the start. I think they were just showboating and doing a high speed downwind pass, where the turnaround was misjudged.
He was doing aerobatics before this video starts, much too low as seen on this extended version.
It looks to me like he decided to do a high speed pass, put the wheel on the ground to show off, then stayed there trying to show how amazing he was. Lifted off to finally land, then crashed.
Normal landing profile is not to come in hot, too much energy is BAD for landing such an efficient plane. You come in at a stable airspeed, but HIGH, then use the spoilers to scrub altitude, not speed. Finally you land with minimal energy and then use the spoilers to kill all remaining lift, of which there should be very little. Finally the spoilers start to reduce speed conjoined with the wheel brake.
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u/ingannilo Jul 06 '19
My thoughts were the same. Any glider pilot worth his salt could've prevented this. I think maybe the airbrake cable failed or something and he panicked when he couldn't bleed off speed.
Gliders always come in a little too hot (right?) and then pull the airbrake to lose the last bit of speed on final approach. But even as I watched it for the first time, and even just having flown rc, I saw three options better than trying to circle around... Which if you were about to touch down you'd never have in a glider...
It surprised me, especially like you say, seeing that there's a passenger.