so landing in strong winds can be a
bother it's pretty dangerous if you do the wrong thing and you can get hurt
pretty quickly it's also very easy to do the right thing with a bit of practice
I'll show you the techniques to keep you safe.
so everybody's out here today having a cracking day's flying. It's really lifty
because it strong. it's fantastic even for the lower airtime guys who can get hours of soaring in these sort of conditions but the hazard on landing is
pretty high. I'll show you the methods that I use to stay safe, how to kill the
wing in strong conditions. if you're landing in strong conditions, if the wind's
really strong, the first thing that you must look for is to try and find a big
open channel where the wind isn't gonna pick up turbulence. it's the most
important factor, so you are not landing behind some trees or a little village, you
can turn off to the side, get yourself into clean air flow, it'll help a lot
with your setup. also make sure you're not landing upwind of any obstacles like
a barbed-wire fence or trees or bushes.
little small bushes are quite useful to land upwind of because they can
grab your glider. so choose things that aren't gonna hurt you, it is
good to use them to block your glider but you're looking way upwind because
remember when the wind is strong the turbulence is a hell of a lot bigger. if
you double the wind speed you quadruple the turbulence. so make sure you're
looking far upwind and you want a big open field, an area with no turbulence to
do your landing set up and somewhere preferably that's got a big drag back
safety zone. use your speed bar to position yourself well before you get to
the ground turbulence layer where you might have to back off the speed bar. so
come in on the upwind side so you can drift back then you want to set yourself
up: get your legs down early as soon as you know you're not needing your speed
bar anymore get your legs down so that if you're going to have a collapse you're in
the PLF position and you can also ski. If you've got lots of speed coming into landing I wouldn't recommend doing a PLF, because you end up rolling. what you want to try and do is ski with your feet.
slide on the ground. that way you'll keep yourself safe and
you won't tumble. and focus on your kill technique. so get it in, line it up
straight and then as you touch down focus on your kill technique
and make sure you kill the glider as your feet hit the ground. you have three
methods. (1) Brakes: if you wrap them and you punch them especially on a high aspect
ratio wing that can kill the power it's not ideal but it might work. I'm going to do a toplanding, with the first option, using the brakes, you want to get a wrap to make sure that you are killing the power properly I'm going to wrap just as I touch down I'll try bend my knees a bit to take the power out So I'm touching down now, it's pretty strong I've done a wrap, punching down really hard. (2) your back risers or your C's: that's a
good technique and it gives you a good way of killing the glider and holding on
to it after it's down. You can see it's pretty strong, because that's trim speed, so the wind is about 35km/h here I'm going to do the same as I did with the brakes Touching down. Pulling in on the back risers and letting it fall down. The way this riser is
connected it stops you pulling when you get to there, so you might want to grab hold of the maillon so you've got a little bit more
pull. my favorite technique punching down on the A's: a really aggressive punch as
much as you can do, punch down on the A's turn run at the wing and pull the brakes
in. you want to try and run so you get onto the wing fabric, just put a
foot on the fabric and then you've got the wing under control. don't flare, come in with a bit of a bump
deliberately so that it helps fold the glider and collapse the A's and then
turn and run towards the glider with the brakes in or wrapping the brakes. That is
my method I use in the worst conditions when I'm drifting backwards on landing
and it's really hectic that's what I would recommend. So a combination of
those. so let's watch this guy that's top landing now, he's landing, he's getting
dragged, he's getting dragged, he's pulled one brake on one side, now the glider's
hit its nose. if that was rocky he would have been pretty badly injured there.
okay so you don't want to really do that. so now I'm just using weight shift to
try and even out the bumps. I'm doing a normal top landing approach just coming
in at an angle. remember as I touch down I've got those three options so
depending on what I feel I'm going to try one or the other. the brakes, I would only really do in the
milder conditions. the back risers are a pretty failsafe method
and the A's are for extreme conditions. okay you can see I'm on speedbar and I've
got no penetration so I'm gonna say the wind here is 40 km/h. I'm gonna have to come off the bar as I get close to the ground release big ears, yank the A's, brakes and the glider is down! so I hope that helps you keep you safe
when you have to kill the wing in strong conditions. remember the basics: at least
you want to bend your legs as you land to take some of the power out
and do an immediate wrap and pull full brakes, you've got to be very aggressive.
however that's not the way I would recommend you do it I'm just mentioning
that because that's what happens to most pilots they kind of forget to get ready
and at least if you can wrap the brakes and sink on your legs you've got a
slightly better chance but that's the way to give you lots of power and a big
drag. the second easy method is to just do your landing approach using your
back risers. if you've got four risers use your C's if you've got three risers
use your C's, if you've got two risers use your B's. so using your back risers,
same thing bend your knees bend your legs on your landing to make it a slightly
harder landing the normal and then be aggressive on the back risers pull them
in, punch them down and then ease off so you don't smack the glider down on the
ground. run around the wing, try and get some fabric under your foot.
but the best method for me, I've used it for 20 years and it's never failed me, is to use your A's be really aggressive with it if
the wind is strong enough that you're drifting back the wing won't hit you, so
make sure you punch down on the A's and turn and run at the wing and pull the
brakes. a mistake that pilots often make with this technique is they pull the A's
weakly and then they do nothing. that'll just give you a front tuck, the
wing will drop back slightly and then it will bang open and pull you so only do
this technique if you're confident that you can give it a good punch on the A's, make a big front tuck, an immediate turn, brake and run at the wing. cool as always
thanks to our crew on patreon we appreciate your support! pop over to Flybubble dot com and get some goodies otherwise I'll see you in the next
episode. Cheers!
