My Accident Report, Woodside May 27th 2020

(Previously posted on the West Coast Soaring Club Incident Forum)


Woodside Accident Report:
May 27th 2020,
I would like to start this report with a few comments. First and foremost, I’ve done many accident reports through the years (primarily for others) and it’s a privilege to be able to file this (a)live!

No matter how long you have been flying, you can never stop focusing on safety. It’s a high risk game and mistakes can be fatal. Please…. Share your mistakes so others can learn. This report is about how I let my guard down and allowed complacency and distraction to creep into my decision making process. The mistakes I made nearly ended my very long flying carrier.

The Accident:

On May 27th, 12:30, with light and variable conditions, I was attempting to launch my rigid wing hang glider (ATOS VQ-Race) off Mount Woodside in the Fraser Valley.
The conditions on launch were warm with clear sky, slightly thermic, with an inconsistent, variable breeze coming into the launch ( 0 – 5mph, generally “up the hill”). Hooked in and on launch getting ready to go, it took several minutes for conditions to yield a favorable cycle.

I picked up my glider and started my run. Within the first few steps I immediately noticed that something felt wrong. The glider felt heavy and I recall a “not quite right” sensation (which may have caused me to hesitate my stride?).

One or two more strides further into the launch run, I felt the glider was getting ahead of me and not lifting. Now totally committed to the takeoff, I was trying to keep up with the wing. In a desperate effort (too little too late), I went prone in my harness, grabbed the base and pushed out to try and save the takeoff. Too little too late, with obviously not enough airspeed, I was starting to settle back onto the slope. The control bar base tube began catching some low brush and the rock covered terrain. Very quickly, the control bar failed and crumpled at the weak links (more on this later).

With the control bar collapsed and me dragging across the terrain like an anchor, the glider pitched/flew forward, nosed over and rolled itself upside down and ended up inverted and pointed back up the hill. I distinctly remember hearing the awful noises of what sounded like my Carbon wing grinding to a halt. As the glider and I “nested” onto the hill, I ended up on my back, laying on top of the inverted undersurface of the wing. My very first thought was… “Shit… this can’t be good for my glider!” (Seriously).

It took a few seconds to assess my condition. I was pretty sure that I had some injuries but my initial assessment made me think they were minor, gloves, helmet and harness appeared to have done their job. I did a quick look around to see if the event was finished… (like Willy Coyote sitting at the bottom of a cliff waiting for a rock to come tumbling down the hill…..). Everything seemed stable, though I was still uncomfortably trapped with my harness strapping me to the wing. I then realized I had a witness who was probably thinking they just saw somebody die…. So I did the customary shout out that I was “OK”…. Stupid and embarrassed, but “OK”.

As the witness arrived, I managed to get unclipped, got myself off my wing. Pretty sure I made some sarcastic comment about the flight being much shorter than expected and moved onto the “what’s next phase”.

My next concern was the thought that…oh, oh… likely somebody down at the FlyBC ranch probably saw this and would be calling 911…. Arrrrrgh… evening news stuff. As luck would have it, Jim from FlyBC had just arrived with his usual bus load PG pilots that made up my rescue crew. After a few minutes I was able to catch my breath, get out of my harness and flight gear and coordinate the newly recruited recovery team into getting my glider back up to the setup area. (Special thanks to all of those that gently carried by baby back up to launch!)

Post-Accident Assessment:
Back on top I assessed myself for injury. My wrists were pretty sore (left wrist had some swelling, but I figured since I was still able to use the hand probably not broken). I also had a bunch of other scrapes, scuffs and bruises, no doubt were going to hurt later on when the adrenalin started to wear off. (For sure it was going to be an evening with Dr. Motrin and his nurse, Ms. Ice Pack)

The Glider…. this left me amazed. For anybody who has ever owned anything Carbon, you can appreciate how the material is both amazingly strong and at the same time very fragile. You don’t try to “fly through rock” and expect a very good outcome.

The first and most obvious damage, the control bar appeared to be a mess. This beautiful sculptured carbon fiber work of aerodynamic art was all twisted up like a pretzel. Upon closer inspection, other than some slight cosmetic damage (Downtube alignment pins) the control bar was in fact in great shape.

As a bit of a comment, what makes the ATOS downtubes special is the short length of stainless steel tubing inserted in the middle of each downtube. It is designed to crumple, absorb energy and allow the downtubes to fold in a hard landing well at the same time stop the glider from nosing over and drilling the pilot in the back of the head with the nose plate. Depending on how creative the pilot is, it does not always break/fail as designed but lucky for me, the brilliant design of the ATOS downtubes probably saved the day. (I was able to replace two of the weak links on launch, allowing me to continue the inspection with the glider upright and back on a assembled control bar.)

Next up, my biggest fear…. What had the crash done to the Carbon fiber leading edges? (To be clear… I was not trying to assess the glider for airworthiness on launch, that would come several days later with a full airframe inspection.) Much to my surprise, I was inspired by the basic inspection that found NO damage…. Given I had just try to fly my baby through rock, I was blown away. The net damage to the glider (after a full inspection several days later) was two bent downtube weak links, a bent control bar pip pin with one downtube required a minor carbon repair to an alignment pin, a very minor tear in some leading edge sail cloth (Dacron patch) and lastly some green and brown cosmetic stains across the span of the leading edges from where “mother Woodside” clawed me back to earth. (or perhaps cradled my dumb ass back onto the ground?)

All in all, both myself and my glider survived the ordeal.

No question, I was Lucky…. VERY Lucky.

Accident Evaluation:

So, now the question….. “What happened”?

The simple answer is…. I blew my launch. (Thank you Captain Obvious).

In my 45+ years of flying hang gliders I have never considered myself to be a gifted pilot. I have to work hard at flying safe and success does not come naturally. Woodside is my home site. I’ve logged hundreds of launches from this site, many of those launches in similar conditions to what I had on this day. So why was today a problem? After carefully assessing what lead to the crash I suggest it all boiled down to a few fundamental mistakes.

I started with the nose too low and flew the glider into ground. (Now that’s embarrassing). Truth is, I have always found launching a rigid wing hang glider, way easier then launching a flex wing hang. They seem so much more efficient at creating lift. There is no inflating the sail, the whole airfoil begins to generate lift from the moment you start to move through the air. As nice as this launch characteristic is, rigid wings do have one minor flaw. Some have described this flaw as a “sticky pitch”. The essence of this flaw is based on the pitch curve of a rigid wing hang glider.

The pitch curve of the ATOS-VQ is very near neutral but still considered to be “stable”. Perhaps, better explained as, when in flight putting the nose “down” (speeding up) will see the glider eventually return to trim (the speed that the glider will fly hands off). This “near neutral” characteristic is even more dramatic if the glider is not loaded via the hang strap and pilot. To deal with this characteristic on launch, all you have to do is have a slightly higher pitch setting during take-off, the glider will then lift and find its own “trim” as the glider is loaded. As I see it, my fundamental mistake was setting the nose too low and essentially flying the glider into the ground. (not certain, but I think the witnessed may have filmed the launch but left before I had chance to ask him… so maybe, somewhere out there in F-Book land or YouTube could be a video of my epic fail…. Post a link if you find it!)

In addition to the mistake of setting the pitch too low, I feel I made other accumulative mistakes that likely contributed to the accident. If you want, you can call them my little list of excuses….

I have thousands of hours of experience, hundreds of takeoffs from this very site yet I now feel the simple rule of maintain my foot launch proficiency was at the root of the mistake. From an “experience” perspective, my foot launches are starting to get rusty. In the past 10 years, nearly all of my launches have been from tow. My foot launch numbers have started to dwindle to perhaps less than 5 or 6 launches a year from Woodside (and no other foot launch site). That “rust” (such as the memory reflex that I rely upon for my pitch setting) should have inspired a more careful consideration of the launch conditions. You can get caught in a trap if you think your years of experience will automatically apply to the task in front of you. I had become complacent and should have given my “rust” greater consideration and should have waiting for more optimal launch conditions (after all, there was no pressure to launch as I was the only pilot there).

The choice of launch position was also a mistake (the spot that I had chosen to start my launch run). I decided to not use what I would normally consider to be the optimal takeoff path for these light and variable conditions. To explain my decision I should start by saying, the ATOS has a very wide wing span (44ft/13.2m). Paraglider pilots that use this launch have installed a windsock on the south side/edge of the take-off area. The position of this wind indicator does limit my options as to where I position myself for takeoff. On days where the wind has a more southerly component I will often ask that it be removed. On this day, wind conditions did have a southerly component and were very light. With only a spectator on launch and already clipped in, I made the decision to launch to the north of the sock.

This launch choice is not as steep, has some vegetation and could be considered a bit shadowed and potentially a thermal trigger point with “dead air” caused by the vegetation. Given the light conditions I should have not compromised my options.

BTW, the position of this sock has been something I have tried to deal with in the past. I’ve tried to have this sock moved to a position lower down on the south slope but it keeps migrating back up the hill by the PG community. Not blaming anybody as I easily could have asked for the sock to be removed but I don’t believe the paragliding community fully grasps the safety risk it creates… a risk that I should have dealt with myself.

Last on my list of excuses… a little thing about the psychology of flying, or as I like to call it, a “head full of distractions”.

We all have them… those day to day “things” you experience and store in your head. Most good pilots can compartmentalize this stuff and put those “things” away, not allowing them to interfere with the task at hand. Thing is, having investigated many crashes through the years I am well aware that distraction has proven to be a major influence on how a pilot handles the decision making processes. We should never have a head full of issues when we get onto launch. The problem is, you need to identify when the distractions are getting out of hand (or cannot be ignored).

For example, in my crowded little box of distractions….

There is this Covid Pandemic thing out there. Unless your living in a cave, this topic can’t help but linger in the back of your mind. My work, my summer flying plans, my local flying all get to share space in my brain with this “little flu”.

Also, on the list of distractions was a great sadness that I have started to develop regarding “My Mother Woodside”. Woodside is the only site in the lower mainland that I can fly my rigid wing. It’s truly very sad how my favorite flying site of the last 40+ years has been decimated/raped by all of its users. The road has taken a pounding, there are no more peaceful times to be had without crowds. We now see (more than ever) vandalism, garbage and destruction of our launch (I mean, for God’s sake… how many times can you put a bullet in a defenceless out-house?) . The crowding and use has reached the point I can no longer bring myself to fly the site on a sunny weekend. I now have to time my adventures to rare mid-week trips.

On the day of my accident, I had deliberately gone out early with some garbage bags, rake and shovel just to clean up the mess of multiple fire pits and garbage on launch (some of the limited space in my head was also being taken up with special thoughts regarding my fellow humans that feel crapping on our beautiful launch is something they feel obliged to do….)

Next distraction, the flying conditions.

I had hoped my planning for this weekday flight was going to pay off with a rewarding cross country. Unfortunately as launch time approached it became obvious the conditions were crapping out with the dreaded stabling out of the Fraser Valley air mass. As I got out to launch I was truly doubting I could get to the high ground needed to go XC. I know for sure, my attitude on launch was “let’s get this over with” (oh, my…..”negative waves Moriarty”… famous movie quote by Donald Sutherland)

Lastly, like all of us, I have my own little sack of “Life’s little distractions”… they were generously tossed into the mix probably not that helpful.
I suspect, on this day I did a poor job shutting the distractions out but being on the hill there is no question my focus should have been on flying. It might even have been a good time to ask myself, should I be flying?

Hopefully, if you have managed to make it this far in my report…. I suggest there are a few takeaway/lessons to be had.

Maintain your skills. Don’t let experience turn into complacency, or worse let all of your experience create a false confidence.

Don’t let the “rust” build up. Know your skills and be honest about what it takes to maintain those skills/proficiency. If your skills are starting to suffer, improve your odds by accommodating those weaknesses, pick better conditions, pick a better time or just take the time to knock off the rust (hopefully by not attempting to fly through rock?).

Focus on the task at hand. Do not ignore things that may have an influence on your decision making. If faced with challenges where options could improve your situation, do not ignore the opportunity to change/improve your plan.

Heck, maybe just avoid trying fly through rock?

Cheers and thanks for your time.

Fly Safe!

Martin Henry