Chief Silk

From: GeneJock
Activity_Date: 8/23 
Remote Name: 63.194.40.62

Comments

Had an interesting flight today off Chief Peak that ended in my deploying my reserve parachute. Since I suspect that few of the pilots reading this post have been in this sort of a pickle or have thrown their reserves, I will describe it in as much detail as I can remember with the hope that more experienced pilots will comment and we can all learn from my adventure. My wing is a Nova Carbon (small) and, when fully loaded, I am near the top of the weight range. Some of the data I will be discussing here came off the barograph trace of my variometer, which was recording at five second intervals.

Chief had been active today and after a bit more than an hour in the air I decided to fly home. I found 400 up above the last bump before Twin Peaks and decided to add some security altitude before heading out across the valley. After a couple of turns I was at 850 feet AGL when things went haywire.

My (left) turns suddenly tightened and, though I was still going up, I wondered if I had spun the wing. However, I was still banked and felt G forces from the turn and concluded (perhaps incorrectly given that my inside brake was at about shoulder height?) that I had entered some kind of vortex rather than having spun the wing. I let up on the inside brake to exit the situation and the inside wing collapsed. I pumped it out and the outside wing collapsed and crevatted. I pumped that out and the wing went into a series of very violent wing overs while heading down (at least one to each side -- possibly more, I cannot remember). I believe that I then pulled both brakes to about shoulder height (with one wrap) to try to stabilize things. The wing surged far forward (about 30 degrees below me) and to the outside. My wing manual said that this is consistent with having been in a spin. I, of course, fell relatively straight down missing the wing by about 10 feet. As I fell, the outside (right) tip folded about 40 percent under and tucked through the lines which were then loose. As my fall snapped the lines taut, the folded tip was trapped in a cravat that I figured would not come out. I then entered a spiral to the left (with the cravat on the outside of the spiral) and decided to toss silk.

According to my barograph trace, I reached a maximum downward velocity of 1900 feet per minute in about 35 seconds -- the reserve then started to slow my descent - at about 500 feet below my last high point and about 350 feet above the ground. I tried to pull in the tangled wing as a best I could in the 25 seconds before I landed safely in the brush.

A passing private plane saw my wing spread across the bushes and must have called the rescue chopper because it showed up just as I was about to reach the trail which would have taken me to Twin Peaks and a better trail down to Thacher. Not being proud (or able to communicate with them), I let them pick me up and drop me off in a field near home.

Experienced pilots -- can you offer insight into what happened here, what I should have done differently, and so on? In the meantime, though this is not an experience that I would recommend all pilots ought to have, it is probably more interesting than jury duty which I have tomorrow morning.