Sunday, August 21, 2016
At 9 a.m. on Sunday morning, some idiot in a powered paraglider got into a spiral dive over a Mormon chapel in Draper, Utah and crashed
through the roof and into the attic, killing himself.
The small hole near the church spire attests to the high rate of vertical speed.
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/08/21/paraglider-dies-after-crashing-into-roof-utah-church.htmlTalk about third-party liability. The chapel was then evacuated and closed. Call me insensitive but this is outrageous. Other than during landing or take off, it is against the law to fly below 1000 feet in GA aircraft over congested areas.
FAR §91.119 Minimum safe altitudes: General.
Except when necessary for takeoff or landing, no person may operate an aircraft below the following altitudes:
(a) Anywhere. An altitude allowing, if a power unit fails, an emergency landing without undue hazard to persons or property on the surface.
(b) Over congested areas. Over any congested area of a city, town, or settlement, or over any open air assembly of persons, an altitude of 1,000 feet above the highest obstacle within a horizontal radius of 2,000 feet of the aircraft.http://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?c=ecfr&sid=3efaad1b0a259d4e48f1150a34d1aa77&rgn=div5&view=text&node=14:2.0.1.3.10&idno=14#se14.2.91_1119Powered paragliders, because of the
Universal Paragliding Design Flaw (UPDF),* should not be allowed over populated areas
at all. Paragliding incidents often seem to reflect negatively on the mature sport of hang gliding in some way. But now that all USHPA hang glider pilots have joined themselves by the hip to paragliding, which is inherently more irresponsible, dangerous and careless, expect blowback. Bad press. Increased insurance claims. Site loss. Poor morale. A really serious liability incident is just a matter of time. This one came close. Watch hang gliders get banned along with paragliders.
People will say "There goes Rick Masters being insensitive again," but what about the blatant insensitivity of people who are incapable of imagining anything going wrong, flying "aircraft" with
known, obvious and glaring control and design flaws over populated areas? No one in our sport ever addresses this. Hey, it traumatizes normal people to have fools fall out of the sky and slaughter themselves in front of families and children. Now at a church service? For God's sake, people. Enough!
SAFETY NOTICE
Issued by Angus Pinkerton - Chairman of the Flying & Safety Committee 21 November 2008.
All paraglider pilots, Instructors, Coaches and Safety Officers must READ, DIGEST AND TAKE ACTION on the contents of this Notice and keep it for future reference.
If you hold a copy of the BHPA Technical Manual this notice must be inserted into it and retained until it is withdrawn or superseded on instructions from the Chairman FSC.
PARAGLIDERS: 360 DEGREE TURNS AND NOSE-DOWN SPIRAL DIVES
Following some recently reported incidents prompting further investigation, it has become apparent that it is possible for pilots to unintentionally enter a nose-down spiral dive from a sustained 360 degree turn – and that recovery from this spiral can be difficult. These characteristics tend to be worse on the ‘safer’ low aspect ratio EN A, B, LTF (DHV) 1 and 1 / 2 wings.
Once in a nose-down spiral dive extremely high rates of descent – 14 to 27 m/s (approximately 30 to 60 mph straight down) may be reached, along with forces of 3g to 4g and airspeeds of up to 100km/h. Clearly any pilot inadvertently entering a nose-down spiral will find all of the above extremely disorientating. Whereas in most situations a low aspect ratio wing (EN A, B, LTF (DHV) 1, 1 / 2 ) will ‘self-recover’ if the pilot lets up on the controls, this is not the case in a nose-down spiral.
Reaching and activating an Emergency Parachute may also be difficult whilst subject to high ‘g’ forces.
360 turn / Spiral dive mechanism:
If a 360 degree turn is continued for a revolution or two, without the airspeed and bank angle being controlled, then the pilot will tend to swing out. The situation can then accelerate rapidly. The effective pilot weight increases as centrifugal force increases, which increases the wing loading, which increases the airspeed, which increases the centrifugal force etc..
And as the pilot swings out, the pitch/roll/yaw axis of the paraglider tilts, with the result that the yaw resulting from holding on inside brake now brings the nose further down, whilst the secondary effect (roll) keeps the glider rotating on the downward vertical corkscrew path....
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If I were an insurance company, you know what I'd do? I'd take one look at this irresponsible crap coming out of paragliding, hang gliding and powered variants and I'd jack the price of 3PL up so high that nobody would be able to afford it. They have to scuttle off and form their own laughable RRG.
Oh...
They did...
Really?
Then what happened?
*Universal Paragliding Design Flaw (UPDF): Paragliders are parachutes modified to soar at the expense of stability and safety. The canopy of a paraglider can suddenly lose its aerodynamic shape in normal atmospheric turbulence, collapse and fall. A 360-degree turn can tighten into a locked-in or nose-down spiral dive where control cannot be regained. A collapse below about 400-feet does not allow enough time for emergency reserve deployment, often resulting in serious injury or death -- see the Paraglider Dead Man's Curve (PDMC). Because these incidents have been occurring for 30 years with over 1,700 deaths in both powered and unpowered paragliders worldwide and show no signs of decreasing, on August 22, 2016, Rick Masters has placed the term "Universal Paragliding Design Flaw (UPDF)" into the lexicon of paragliding.
by Bob Kuczewski » Sat Aug 13, 2016 11:28 pm 
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