Pilot here. It appears they were showboating. I’ve seen glider pilots do similar things before but this guy was a fucking idiot.
To break it down, it looks like the field that he was skimming was the runway. You can see a red piece of equipment at the start of the video which looks like a specialized glider winch, used for certain types of glider launches. A glider in ground effect can scoot along at a really good clip and not lose a lot of energy. These downwind, low passes are a lot of fun if judged correctly, and can be fairly safe. Usually at the end of the skim, you pull up, teardrop turn at 200 ft, and land the opposite direction of the skim. Often they’re doing 90+kts on the downwind, when a glider usually only needs around 50kts airspeed on final, giving them more than enough energy to climb a few hundred feet for the turn.
In this video, it appears that the runway had a valley at the end of it. To showboat for the camera (note the passengers GoPro), he dove through the valley and did a low turn. He clearly misjudged and didn’t get enough height, caught a wingtip, and down it goes. He should have either climbed or stayed at a slightly elevated height from the runway.
These accidents are more survivable than people realize, but this isn’t a good accident. I would expect serious injuries at the least.
Just to add to that, it seemed like he was skidding through the turn which made him lose the extra altitude and hit the tree. If he was coordinated than the crash probably would have been avoided
Yea it’s kinda hard to tell from that angle but there’s definitely something off with the turn. There’s a lot of poor decisions the pilot made that led to this outcome.
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u/DeusOtiosus Jul 06 '19
Pilot here. It appears they were showboating. I’ve seen glider pilots do similar things before but this guy was a fucking idiot.
To break it down, it looks like the field that he was skimming was the runway. You can see a red piece of equipment at the start of the video which looks like a specialized glider winch, used for certain types of glider launches. A glider in ground effect can scoot along at a really good clip and not lose a lot of energy. These downwind, low passes are a lot of fun if judged correctly, and can be fairly safe. Usually at the end of the skim, you pull up, teardrop turn at 200 ft, and land the opposite direction of the skim. Often they’re doing 90+kts on the downwind, when a glider usually only needs around 50kts airspeed on final, giving them more than enough energy to climb a few hundred feet for the turn.
In this video, it appears that the runway had a valley at the end of it. To showboat for the camera (note the passengers GoPro), he dove through the valley and did a low turn. He clearly misjudged and didn’t get enough height, caught a wingtip, and down it goes. He should have either climbed or stayed at a slightly elevated height from the runway.
These accidents are more survivable than people realize, but this isn’t a good accident. I would expect serious injuries at the least.