Hello all:
My name is Gilad, i am an Israeli living and flying is Seattle... (P3 Pilot)
Looking forward to fly with you within the next few months.
The same thing happened to a friend last week in the Seattle area, see below:
the pilot is a (P2 with ~60 flights) - he was lucky
-Pilots account-
Perhaps I finally paid my dues, in multiple trips to Whidbey Island over the past several months without my feet parting company with the grass. Sunday was fantastic on many levels, and as Jim said, there was something for everyone from barely scratchable slightly cross wind, luring several of us to explore the beach, to
west wind too strong to fly, and everything in between. Fantastic!
I was flying a borrowed wing, as my wing had an unfortunate conversation with a bicycles chain ring while ground handling last week, and is currently spending it's week with a skilled individual in Utah and his sewing machine. I was flying Matt Amends old Yellow, a FB Booster with 300+ hours of airtime. It mayhave been the last time the wing will ever fly. s
It was crowded at times, when the wind was just right there would be over 10 pilots soaring north of the park. In addition, there was a group of people flying their RC Gliders in the ridge lift as well. They were generally gracious enough, and had enough situational awareness, to give us plenty of room, and everyone was able to enjoy the smooth, strong lift. Later in the day, a gentleman showed up with his large, fast RC glider who seemed to be operating with a different agenda. He apparently found it sporting to fly fast and close to the PG's who were in the air, while performing aerobatics. While obviously in excellent control of his glider, I was intending to ask him to provide more room, as it's too easy and potentially dangerous if he does happen to make a mistake. Unfortunately I didn't get the chance to speak with him until after the mistake was made.
Around 5pm the winds were really rather strong; there were only two pilots flying, John (I forgot his last name again.... local Whidbey Tandem Pilot) flying tandems, and I had just enough speed in the old Booster to penetrate the wind on 1/2 bar. It was marginal but definitely flyable, and I was having an absolute blast. I was on bar, heading directly out towards the water, and just past the beach, when I heard and felt a tremedous WHACK! from the glider. My mind was instantly thinking I had either broken some A-Lines on the old wing while on the bar, or had taken a very odd frontal collapse, but the one sure thing was my heart was in my throat. As I looked up at the wing, it seemed to be maintaining its shape and flying well, no lines trailing behind me.... but what was that that just fell from my wing? It looked like a rigid tube of some sort. Odd... that's not a paraglider component....and then I saw a blue, narrow small rigid wing fluttering down toward the water, and realized what I had just seen was the remains of the RC Glider fuselage dislodging itself from my PG and falling to earth. My heart returned to normal as I determined there truly was nothing immediately wrong with the way my wing was flying, but I wanted to determine why there was so much more sunlight visible throug the left side. After an uneventful landing, the glider was inspected and signifincant damage had occured, several large tears in the top panel, with a puncture through one of the internal baffles, and some blue paint smudges from the RC plane. The RC glider was totalled.
I would normally be able to write this off as an accident, forgive an forget, but the gentleman was consciously and actively flying close to me, and even John was getting buzzed while flying a child tandem. During our ineveitable session of constructive criticism that followed, I think he became aware of the potential consequences involved, and I don't anticipate him conduction close-quarters aerobatics demonstrations again.
I enjoy watching them fly their planes, and don't mind sharing the airspace with them, but a reminder to all of us in the future not to hesitate it pre-emptively starting a dialogue with these other pilots if you feel that they are operating their aircraft in a manner which is potentially threatening. They may not understand the potential consequences of a spatial misjudgement and the finer aspects of how well PG's fly with severed lines, but hopefull a friendly dialogue can prevent this from happening again. I think I was lucky that nothing worse happened.
-Noah
