[Rick Masters]

I always considered wheels a crutch.

[reluctantsparrow]

I always considered wheels a crutch.

you are not alone with that sentiment Rick. I can spot land with the best of them Rick. When I am in the zone I have purposefully landed on only one foot to demonstrate control, then slowly lowered the other foot and slowly walked off the spot. I can do this every time of course (!!!!NOT!!!), but I have a few skills in that regard and I still do not consider wheels a crutch.
Does anyone here know Scotty Cambell? He used to be an arizona pilot and now flies with me up here in the NW.....Scotty is an awesome pilot, been flying since he was eight years old, his Dad, Lucky Cambell was owner/operator of a early 70s hang glider company.....anyway....Scotty came up to me in the LZ and told me the same thing....Scotty told me...you dont need those wheels Jim...get rid of them.
I knew he was actually complimenting me on my landing abilities so of course I was not offended, but I ignored his advice, kept the wheels, and less than two weeks after Scotty said to get rid of them I was coming into the Dog mtn. LZ bleeding off good speed, already rotated up in my harness, both hands on the DTs, ready to flare but I still had a good 30 feet or so to travel before flaring as the glider still had a lot of good speed....when whamo! I got slapped straight down into the ground at what I am guessing was 25 mph. I still had a lot of speed to bleed off. But because of my wheels my glider Rolled in on about four inches of mowed grass (soft soil) for a safe landing. Without those two little wheels (6 inch finsterwalders that day) my base tube would have dug in and I would have pounded in doing about 25.....I could have been the next guy in a wheelchair....that easy.....
there was one witness to this slap down.....he immediattly came over to me after I landed and confirmed my experience was exactely what he witnessed....he looked down at my two little ....crutches...and said...good thing you had those wheels on there....you were really slapped down hard....and I agreed.
There was no pilot error on my part. I was perfectly centered, wings level, had good speed along with a nice light grip on the DTs....everything was cool.....but air is invisible and s*** happens...not a crutch as far as I am concerned.
Did a couple edits to my post for accuracy and might as well add that the air had become rough from about twenty feet off the deck. So I was not caught sleeping. I was ready for turbulance and it still happened so fast I could not respond in time.
i have been flying 44 years and have never been slapped down in that manner.or what felt like being slapped down...which may not, of course, have been an actual slapping down but a flying through an eddy rotating from the rear in such a manner that it robbed the glider of airspeed causing the glider to drop suddenly, within two feet of the ground, making strong contact the ground before airspeed could be re-acquired....but the result was the same. A sudden and abrupt loss of altitude making contact with terra firma at a pretty good clip.
Now I could have surmised from 44 years of flying experience that such a thing would never happen to me but I would have been wrong to make that assumption.
One more edit....45 years experience, not 44 years.....today, june 20, is my birthday!

[reluctantsparrow]

for those familiar with dog mtn. lz conditions. the wind in the process of switching form sw to nw as it often does mid to late afternoon. I would identify wind direction was due west on my RH approach into the regular lz which took me deeper towards the mountain on base leg to pretty almost parallel the beach on final coming in. There have been several similar incidents when pilots have landed in these conditions at Dog, one of which I remember resulted in a broken neck If I remember right, so I wasnt the first and this air was not unique. I was just fortunate enough to be flying with crutches....I really like that term for wheels Rick. Never heard it used before in regards to wheels. I like it, going to call them my crutches from now on

[Bill Cummings]

I use wheel crutches on my Sport 2 and bifocal eye crutches on my face.
Soon I'll need an I.V. drip hanging on the crossbar and ear crutches behind each ear.
On the podium is my old laptop. I will stand leaning on my crutches to give my back
a rest. After a while my arm pits get sore so I sliced open a big diameter swimming noodle
and with black tape taped on pads for my arm pits. Crutches for my crutches.
I've got crutches holding my drilled teeth holes together.
I've got a stent crutch holding the blood vessel to the right side of my heart open.

[Rick Masters]

I've never criticized anyone who chose to fly with wheels.
But I didn't clean up my glider and harness to throw away the performance gains on something that I have never needed and which offered dubious value for cross-country.
When you crash in high density altitude on rugged terrain, you should be prepared to plant a wingtip, embrace your lower downtube with both arms and slam into the undersurface of your sail when your nose impacts. Wheels won't matter. But the glider is expendable and will absorb a lot of the force of impact that otherwise would be spent on your body.
The last thing I would ever do is stay prone landing hot and out of control. That would be begging for a broken neck.
Wheels are for runways, not XC.

[SamKellner]

reluctantsparrow,

What's that LZ like? Could it be a tree line rotor?

[Bill Cummings]

I have to admit that while landing in a freshly tilled field east of Chelan Washington even big wheels didn't help. It was like 6 inches of snow. Only slightly denser.

[Rick Masters]

Fatal ultralight accident. Stalled at 30 feet, then rotated and dove to the ground. Nose wheel dug into the soft dirt and pitched pilot forward. Left leading edge broke at crossbar junction, otherwise no apparent damage to airframe. No dirt or grass in noseplate suggests shallow angle of impact. Lots of powered hang gliding fatalities are similar. Illustrates a greater risk of powered trikes in outlandings.

[ARP]

As with any out landing you need to fly the aircraft to the ground. The field looks level enough for the trike to have landed without incident had it not stalled at 30'. Sorry to hear the pilot died.

Had it been a foot launched HG stalling from 30' the result may well have been the same if the glider rotated nose first into the dirt.

[Bill Cummings]

Fatal ultralight accident. Stalled at 30 feet, then rotated and dove to the ground. Nose wheel dug into the soft dirt and pitched pilot forward. Left leading edge broke at crossbar junction, otherwise no apparent damage to airframe. No dirt or grass in noseplate suggests shallow angle of impact. Lots of powered hang gliding fatalities are similar. Illustrates a greater risk of powered trikes in outlandings.

I used to to be and fly with the Sky Gypsies that John McAfee lead. Being a HG pilot first I already had it in me to never be short of glide to a good LZ.
While the Sky Gypsies were shooting down Skeleton Canyon in New Mexico John Olson and I would be following -yes- but at much higher altitude. In fact I was so far above the flock that I could have had a power out and still made it to either one side of the mountain or the other. John McAfee's nephew died in Skeleton while flying low through it.
Just thinking about all the Sky Gypsies flying low through that canyon (trusting their motors) just made me shiver.
Every flight requires a place to land. One should always be within glide of a good one. (motor or not.)