יורם
קורס או לא קורס יצאת בכבוד מאחד האירועים שגורמים להמון תאונות קשות בעולם
למזלך היה לך מספיק גובה ולא איבדת עשתונות והגבת ככל הנראה נכון למרות שאפילו לא ידעת לאיזה כיוון אתה מסתובב דבר שיכול לקרות לכל אחד אגב שמעתי על הרבה תאונות שאנשים נינעלים בספירלות ופשוט לא עושים כלום...
RESPECT
שלא תבין אותי לא נכון קורס SIV הוא קורס חובה למי שטס בתרמיקות !!!!!"סטיב האם" אמר לי בקורס טרמיקות בספרד :
it's not the safer sport in the world
הבאתי עדות ראייה לתאונה שהייתה ל סטפן שמוקר , טייס מעולה עם רקורד מטורף שטס ונהרג לפני 3 חודשים ב PWCA במקסיקו ונכתבה ע"י ניקול מקלרן
I’m not quite sure how to write this. I had a pretty good flight, but witnessed something terrible which somehow makes my day not that important.
The task committee called an 87 km task, pretty short by recent standards. Start around Cerpel at 12:45pm, back to launch, then to San Augustine, out to Santa Maria, along the ridge to Aguila, to within 4 km of Cualte (on the south side of the lake), and finally goal at the Lake LZ.
We all got ourselves established on Crazy after some initial scratching around, and then tagged Cerpel for the start. Then it was back to launch. There were 2 distinct groups at this point…those who tagged Cerpel and then flew back to Crazy to get back to launch that way, and those of us who tagged Cerpel and then flew directly back to launch. We got back to launch before the other larger group, but in the end it was the whole armada on the rim between the Penon and launch.
We needed to get high for the over-the-back run to San Augustine, so pilots were flying along the ridge behind the Penon trying to connect to the clouds there; rather than fly out front of Penon (which takes longer). I will admit I was one of them. It’s a long glide out to any LZ’s when you do this, and you’re directly in the lee of the Penon. But there were about 100 pilots in front of me doing the same thing, and we were all being lemmings. It was a stupid place for us to fly.
Directly behind Penon there is a V-shaped notch with a shear cliff. I saw a pilot flying a light blue Omega in the V-notch (like a small canyon) trying to thermal out of there. All of a sudden I saw him get a collapse, which turned into a cravatte on his right side. I could see him desperately trying to keep a straight heading while trying to fix the cravatte. He’d fly straight for a few seconds, and then it would start to wind up. He managed to stop the winding-up 2 times, but the 3rd time he couldn’t control it, and it locked into a spiral. Oh shit.
As he started winding up I was saying to myself “throw your reserve”, but he never did. At full wind-up speed he crashed into the cliff in the V-notch in a cloud of dust. I saw the cravatte pop out as this happened. But it was too late, and he spiraled into the cliff again at full speed, the glider caught on something, and he slid down the cliff face.
I was right over him as this happened so I was unable to see the pilot number on the underside of his glider. I could see him laying at the bottom of the cliff, not moving, no sound coming from him. Another Omega glider and myself started circling over him, shouting at him to try and get a response. But after seeing the speed and violence with which he smashed into the cliff, I was pretty sure I had just seen a pilot die.
