An Accident Report from Personal Experience
Many well known pilots are able to relate an incident which they were lucky enough to survive more or less unscathed. Some are no longer able to talk about their experience.
If I tell about a personal incident then only for one reason:
This report should encourage you to consider if something similar could happen to you, because for me it was understood to the day before the accident:
“Something like this would never happen to me.
I'm sure of that. I wouldn't do it.”
In the summer of 1992 during a good weather period I had flown my DG-400 quite a bit out of Oerlinghausen, and had taken great pleasure from the good performance of this type. One Sunday an acquaintance asked me to take him up in a two-seater, since he had never flown before. There was strong, gusty wind, but also good thermals. Unfortunately only the ASK-13 of our club was available, but I had flown it countless times, although not in the preceding few months.
After the winch start we gained altitude rapidly, but also drifted downwind quite a bit. But 600 m above ground left plenty of room to get back. The airfield became smaller - we drifted about 8 km and so I decided to go back. As soon as we left our thermal we hit strong sink. The ASK-13 hardly made headway over ground and speeding up lost us more altitude. In addition we hit incredible sink, which pegged the vario down. In these conditions it did not take long to lose the height we had gained!
But one has learned to cope with this, so I announced to my passenger that we would make an out-landing in a field about 2 km from the airfield. An aggravation, but nothing serious.
Suddenly before turning into downwind we hit another thermal. The vario pegged on up, the airport sank away before us and the way to landing at the airfield was open. Because we were still quite low I did not want to fly a turn and drift again, we seemed to have enough altitude in any case. And so I passed up a safe outlanding field ......
I would never have imagined what happened next. The vario pegged down again, and within a few seconds I could imagine a possible crash. Between us and the airfield was a forest of high pines. No matter. To slow down would mean staying in the sink and drift longer, speeding up in the ASK-13 would degrade the L/D. The airfield was so near, and yet unreachable.
“Speed is life, don't pull up and cause a stall, stick to 120 km/h airspeed!”
The edge of the forest blocked the view to the airfield. Five meters above the tree tops and a few meters from the road to the airfield I pulled up very gently and managed to avoid the trees. A slight noise told me that we must have brushed against the tree tops. Now I had to avoid some parked cars and aim for a space between the hangar and a young birch tree. The space was only about 20 m wide, and we had an 18 m span. And so I told myself:
"The hangar is solid, the birch tree will give. Better to hit the tree than the hangar.”
The impact of the wing did not seem very hard, but the sailplane immediately spun sideways. With full rudder and ailerons to the left and full elevator we “landed” about 10 m behind the perimeter fence, slewed sideways through the grass for a few meters and stopped.
Concerned club members were ready to lift us out of the sailplane, but nothing serious had happened. I tried to undo my seat belts by loosening the buckles. The existence of the central lock escaped me for the moment.
Damage:
- The right wing lost about 2 meters out from the aileron.
- The rudder was torn from the fuselage and just hanging there.
- The elevator was missing about half of the control surface and was dangling in the wind. Yet we just seems to have touched the tree tops.....
What did I personally learn from this?
The first mistake was lack of currency on a type I had not flown for some time. I had no feel for the difference in handling of an ASK-13 and a DG-400.
The second mistake was to let myself drift too far downwind.
The third mistake was passing up a good outlanding field even though I realized the strong downwind drift.
The fourth mistake was excessive self-confidence and my conviction that I would never make such a stupid beginners mistake. One listens only half-heartedly when an instructor points out the strong wind and the possibility of excessive drift.
And what contributed to a relatively benign outcome?
A certain mental training, which at the right moment enabled me to do the only right thing. And the avoidance of panic. Accident reports are good for mental preparation.
What would you do in a similar situation? How can you avoid it in the first place? Read accident reports from that point of view, and don't be too sure that you also could suddenly face a life threatening situation. This near catastrophe radically altered my safety attitude and lead to the “Safety” section in our home page.
Always happy landings!
- friedel weber -
translated by Albin Schreiter, Mississauga, CDN
Another story was published by Des Howson
in the Discussion Group for owners of DG-Self-starters
This story is not so technical as operational but it does highlight some limitations of operating motorgliders and I send it in the interests of increasing safety awareness.
Recently a friend of mine was attempting to soar his DG-400 to his home base from a competition site - about 400 km. As he approached to cross a range of mountains that runs the entire length of the east coast of Australia (The Great Dividing Range), he encountered a blanket of low cloud ( 8/8 ). He then obtained a forecast for his destination and based on that, elected to utilize the sawtooth technique to fly VFR on top until reaching the broken cloud that was forecast at the destination. The cloud continued to increase and by the time he reached his final glide position he could see there was no break in the cloud. He was now quite correctly worried and contacted ATC with his predicament. As he was in controlled airspace (with a clearance) commercial traffic was diverted. A rescue helicopter was also sent to the area.
He obtained a clearance to climb as high as he could so as to fly clear of the cloud but here his predicament worsened. He had departed with much less than a full tank of fuel (no long range tanks) and now without having gained enough altitude to glide to safety or jump with the parachute, his engine stopped as the fuel ran out! Now in real trouble, he attempted to retract the engine but it would not move.
Now in VERY SERIOUS trouble he found a small hole in the cloud and spiraled through it with the engine up and stopped. Here his luck helped him as the hole was over the only clearing within 40 km in the dense forest that covers these mountains. With cloud base at 500 ft AGL, he had little time to plan his landing on this small area (about 150 mtrs square) and he was forced to land heavily and perform a ground loop to avoid running through a wire fence.
Miraculously he was not injured and the glider suffered only minor damage. The pilot was rescued by the helicopter that had followed him through the hole in the cloud and he is now having to answer some very difficult questions from the authorities. The aircraft was recovered some days later by trailer and the reason for the engine not retracting has, as yet, not been determined. (there is a possibility it was "finger trouble" due to nerves).
The morals of this story are many and I will let you ponder those at your leisure. Flying motorgliders requires planning and much thinking about "what if ....?".
Don't allow yourself to be in a position
where good luck is your last chance at escape.
Safe flying, Des.
Other things which have occurred to me:
I’m pretty sure that all these safety articles on our website do not meet with everybody’s approval. Some may think of it as “sermons” or the ranting of an alarmist. Now, because of the terrible accident that killed my friend Jens, I think that there cannot be too much information collected together in one place.
So that perhaps you can better understand my very personal urge to publish safety articles, I want to come out and soberly recite what has happened to me in my 18 year gliding career.
Perhaps that will further help the understanding.
1.
During my training, my instructor and I were flying circuit after circuit in a C model Falke at the usual altitude and place. Suddenly, a glider came at high speed diagonally to our downwind leg and passed about 10 m above us. We could hear him in spite of our engine running! Back on the ground, the Wrath of God (read: CFI) descended on the unlucky pilot who was completely bewildered. He had never seen us!
Fact: At that time, I didn't dream of owning my own glider and did not know anything about the large canopies of DG gliders with their excellent visibility. But now I fly patterns with an excess of altitude of at least 150 m or else I get in line!
2.
This is the story of a winch launch in an AS-W15 shortly after I got my PPL which was not the way it was supposed to be.
A friend of mine was in front of me on the second cable of the winch which left me plenty of time to get ready to launch.
Suddenly he decided to wait.
The launch director had my glider pulled to the front and said, “Hurry up and launch so that we can get the cables back!” As I gave thumbs up, I realized that I had not adjusted the altimeter. While I was turning the adjustment knob, the winch cable tightened and the launch began. What I didn't notice until the launch had begun was a nose-heavy trim setting.
The glider rose from the ground but flew at a low angle of attack behind the cable. I didn't pull back on the stick and waited for the minimum altitude of 40 m. The launch driver saw the RPM go nearly into the red and thought I had had a problem and released. He slowed the motor and released the tension causing the glider to back-release.
At that moment I reached 40 m and pulled back hard on the stick. It quickly got very quiet in the cockpit. I couldn’t believe the reading on the ASI: 22 knots. I didn't know what was happening but I couldn’t help noticing that the glider was suddenly pointing at the ground!
I was not frightened but could only think, “This can’t be true!” I yanked the stick back as the earth came up fast. Finally the ground assumed its normal orientation at about 10 m of altitude and I was able to fly diagonally over the other starting lines to the landing area. When I finished rolling I stopped only about 400 m from my starting point.
My friends came running up to me while I greeted them happily with, “No problem; nothing happened!” But they all looked at me strangely and said things like, “....celebrate a new birthday....”
Fact: It doesn't matter if someone else is in a hurry. First I will do my start checklist quietly. Until then, the thumb stays down. And especially with a winch launch, I will keep checking the airspeed!
3.
I have already described my worst accident at the beginning of this article. Since then, I have never let myself get downwind of a ridge in a pure sailplane. In my motorglider, I always extract the motor well within sight and gliding distance of an outlanding field.
4.
The rest of my incidents have been a series of landing gear damages like those that occur in any glider club. One was a nice thermal flight with the gear on my DG-400 down. And, of course, in the landing pattern I cycled the gear up!
Fact: Since then, my landing checklist no longer says, "Landing Gear Down", rather it says, "Landing Gear Front".
Already then, I wanted a landing gear warning.
5.
Both times I have made an outlanding, it was uphill. And both times my approach speed was too low because the rising ground gave me a false perspective. The results were unnecessarily hard landings.
6.
Landing once at Vinon, my rollout was very short and the ground was too close. I regained my self-respect when a friend said my gear was down on the approach.
Fact: Now my checklist says "Gear Forward and Locked" instead of just "Gear Forward".
In the meantime, all new DG-800’s have a torsion spring which automatically holds the gear handle in the locked position.
7.
I had already started DG Flugzeugbau when I came back to the field tired after long flight in my DG-400. There was a strong head wind on the runway. Maybe my final approach speed was a little slow, my flair a little high, and the head wind a little weaker near the ground. Stall - bang! The landing gear rocker arm bored a hole through the rear bulkhead and all the gear tubing was bent. 8,000 Euro-dollars damage. What else but just stupidity?
8.
Since then, I only have two broken tail wheels to offer as incidents but those are really only normal wear and tear. The only damage to a DG-800 happened in a strong cross wind and soft ground. Otherwise, nothing has happened to one. But it is easy to fly and now has a gear warning and a stall warning systems. That helps!
When I look at my own experience, the bottom line is:
Am I too dumb to be flying?
That’s possible!
But actually I don't really think that.
Because all around me others are making mistakes and sometimes the result is terrible.
It seems the others are no better.
Up till now, I have been lucky and I keep trying to learn from my mistakes.
These articles are intended to persuade you not to rely on your luck.
Maybe we will meet somewhere and probably my wife will be there too. Don’t tell her these stories.
She knows very little of these incidents and already worries enough about me.
And she knows nothing about computers.
Betreff: Unfortunate
Von: "Pete Williams"
Dear K-F-W:
I can only cite from my experience in various cockpits over 56 years:
Anytime a pilot's "routine cockpit duties" (those hand and eye movements he has become accustomed to) must changed or altered, an accident is crouching at the door.
Pete Williams