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.
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