US Hawks Hang Gliding Association

Wonder why he didn't cut himself out??? It's hard to make that judgement because if he had cut himself out no telling if he will hit the mountains below and if you don't cut yourself out and throw you chute chance are that you may still go up and up tuff call

I was going to write about my thought process leading up to this incident, but I decided that it would be just an exercise in excuse making for my bad decisions, including my disregard of FAA rules regarding ultralight aircraft and clouds. The bottom line is that I wanted have my cake and eat it too: I thought I could scoot under that cloud line and purposely cut it close in order to maximize my altitude for the long glide out into the desert.

Once in the cloud the instinct was to fly fast and straight to get to the other side. However, afraid of PIO I popped the VG and tried to slow down. But the video doesn't capture the surge of lift I was experiencing. At one point the base tube was almost ripped from my hand. Soon after that I no longer had control of the glider and the G forces seemed to be building so I thought the safest course of action would be to throw the chute. Fortunately, it worked out.

!! WOW !!     

The combination of a pegged vario with a cloud directly overhead should spell:

     G E T    O U T T A    H E R E    N O W ! !

Great video Al!!!