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 Post subject: Re: Paragliding Fatality at Torrey - May 12, 2012
PostPosted: Tue May 15, 2012 7:15 pm 
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Jacmac wrote:
Bob, can you pinpoint on the picture where the paraglider actually went down? If it was a turbulence induced collapse, the question is, was it pilot error in failing to recover from the collapse?

I'm not exactly sure and I don't want to get "dinged" by the Torrey folks for posting anything that's inaccurate. But from the pictures I've seen of the rescue, I believe it was in (or very near) the area behind the wind shadow in that bowl just south of the mansion with the palm trees.

Jacmac wrote:
I've been approached by prospective pilots at Torrey a couple of times and they asked me about the differences between Hang Gliding and Paragliding. So I told them about the possibility of a paraglider collapse, but that a collapse was highly unlikely at Torrey due to the smooth conditions. I've never experienced any turbulence at Torrey beyond a minor bump when I hit someone's wake. If this woman was flying low and in a strong enough crosswind, I can imagine that the turbulence could get severe in certain areas if you are not far enough out.

That's pretty much been my view as well. I did my student paragliding in the mountains (Little Black, Horse, Crestline/Marshall), but now that I've got my ratings, I generally stick to coastal sites for paragliding. But this accident points out that even at coastal sites, there are dangers.

By the way, the directional graph above only shows one part of the picture. Here's the wind speed during that same period:

Attachment:
torrey_crash_wind_speed.png
torrey_crash_wind_speed.png [ 5.98 KiB | Viewed 48921 times ]


Remember, of course, that these recordings are from the Gliderport itself (I believe) and the accident site was a little south. So not every little bump in either graph can be taken as accurate at the accident site. Having said that, those winds are fairly strong, and it's possible that there was some significant rotor or other mechanical turbulence in the area of the accident.

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 Post subject: Re: Paragliding Fatality at Torrey - May 12, 2012
PostPosted: Tue May 15, 2012 7:20 pm 
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SamKellner wrote:
Again, good work BobK :clap: .


Thanks Sam.

I know that it just happened, and I know that people can (and should) be sensitive about people's feelings. But I think it's important to try to capture and document as much information as we can before time lets it slip away from us. The best way to honor anyone who perishes in aviation is to learn from it and to try to do better for everyone else.

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 Post subject: Re: Paragliding Fatality at Torrey - May 12, 2012
PostPosted: Tue May 15, 2012 7:45 pm 
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Bob,

The info you present here should give everyone a better understanding of the accident.
I can't see anyone being offended by that. And of course, sooner the better.

Some of the articles say it was very near the same location where the nude lady was rescued recently.

This news article might help pinpoint the scene.
Interesting to read. Friend did not want to be identified.
Written soon after the accident then updated later.
http://www.10news.com/news/31054994/detail.html

:shifty: ,
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 Post subject: Re: Paragliding Fatality at Torrey - May 12, 2012
PostPosted: Wed May 16, 2012 10:08 am 
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Hi Sam,

Thanks for that link ( http://www.10news.com/news/31054994/detail.html ). I'm reposting it here in case it gets changed later ...

Quote:
Woman Who Died After Paragliding Crash Identified
Medical Examiner's Office Identified Crash Victim As Pam Hargett Of South Carolina

POSTED: 1:31 pm PDT May 12, 2012
UPDATED: 12:45 pm PDT May 13, 2012


SAN DIEGO -- Authorities have identified a woman who died after a paragliding crash in La Jolla on Saturday.

The woman, who was identified as 52-year-old Pam Hargett of South Carolina, was paragliding when she apparently lost control and crashed into the side of the Torrey Pines cliffs, according to the San Diego County Medical Examiner's Office. The downed glider came to rest suspended on a cliff near Black's Beach, said lifeguard Lt. Nick Lerma.

The Medical Examiner's Office said Hargett's fiancé witnessed the incident and called 911.

At one point, as many as 20 rescuers struggled to reach Hargett.

"It was in a very difficult area for rescue crews to get to," said lifeguard Lt. John Everhart.

The rescue team crossed the property of businessman Bill Lerach. He was hosting a fundraiser for Rep. Bob Filner, a candidate for San Diego mayor and for Scott Peters, who is running for Congress.

Lifeguards rappelled down the cliff and secured the unconscious paraglider, Lerma said. A helicopter hoisted the 52-year-old woman to the top of the cliffs where she was pronounced dead, he said.

A friend of the couple who did not want to be identified told 10News he had met Hargett a few times.

Hargett and her fiancé David would travel to San Diego from South Carolina and flew with a local paragliding group, according to the friend. The friend described Hargett as having piloted her own paraglider for two to three years.

The lifeguards who came to Hargett's rescue could not say exactly how she lost control.

"I have no idea whether this is a wind-related issue or an equipment issue or an operator issue," said Everhart.

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 Post subject: Re: Paragliding Fatality at Torrey - May 12, 2012
PostPosted: Wed May 16, 2012 4:04 pm 
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Condolences to her fiance, family, friends, ...
==================================

1.
Quote:
The rescue team crossed the property of businessman Bill Lerach. He was hosting a fundraiser for Rep. Bob Filner, a candidate for San Diego mayor and for Scott Peters, who is running for Congress.
Such may bring on more restricted airspace at Torrey.

2. Mix of language? There are yet solid sectors of aviation and sport that see types of "hang gliders" as including the airframe hang gliders and the canopy-only hang gliders (with default strong toward "paragliders"). Could the press ever get to write "canopy-only gliding parachute" or "canopy paraglider" ? That probably won't occur in my lifetime; things in confusion seem not to smooth out very fast.

3. Has anyone done full smoke study of the air flow field below the top of the Torrey cliff during various wind conditions?
Image The face of the cliff contributes something to the flow field in terms of heat by the sun. Also, the height of the cliff and the cliff's verticality help to form a profile of flow different from low-angled smooth hills; just how much front-of-cliff windshear/rotor and rotor-calm occurs during certain times of day with certain meta ambient wind speeds? Was she trained well for examining specialized wind gradients?
Next clip is idealized and not what the highly vertical Torrey cliffs give:
Image
I am wondering what the schedule is for release of captured-rotated-heated bubbles that are perhaps low-hugging the cliff are? Sporadic complex wind shears could be occurring when most everything else is seemingly smooth beyond the active temporary regions. Some events could simply wrap a non-airframed gliding parachute into wads. Another clip from someone: Image

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 Post subject: Re: Paragliding Fatality at Torrey - May 12, 2012
PostPosted: Wed May 16, 2012 5:06 pm 
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http://www.paraglidingforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=47773
on the incident.

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 Post subject: Re: Paragliding Fatality at Torrey - May 12, 2012
PostPosted: Wed May 16, 2012 6:48 pm 
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Hi #5 8-) ,

Thanks for the link to the pgforum. I figured they would have a discussion.

They are saying that the wind was due West with some South component at times.

They could really benefit by seeing Bob's charts on the wind direction and velosity, and approximate location.

I'm not sure if posting a link to our HG forum would be the correct thing to do??

This lady had been "piloting her own paraglider for 2 or 3 years" according to the friend.

What really gets me is, how many US hang pilots have been H-3 for >10yr and dream about flying Torrey, knowing it is out of the question.

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 Post subject: Re: Paragliding Fatality at Torrey - May 12, 2012
PostPosted: Thu May 17, 2012 10:30 am 
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JoeF wrote:
That probably won't occur in my lifetime; things in confusion seem not to smooth out very fast.

That's the nature of turbulence ... whether turbulence of wind or turbulence of thought.      :)

JoeF wrote:
Has anyone done full smoke study of the air flow field below the top of the Torrey cliff during various wind conditions?

Not that I know of. It would be a difficult thing to do given the many different cliff profiles and wind direction combinations. For example, where the accident happened might be completely smooth in west conditions, but it could be very turbulent in northwest conditions. Slicing that area with smoke studies at varying altitudes and locations for a variety of wind directions would be a daunting task. Maybe a better approach would be to build a model of the cliff line. I know they have technology now that can carve almost any shape from data points. I'll bet there's enough accurate data on the cliff to build such a model. My wind tunnel knowledge is about 30 years out of date, but because it's a model, I think the data would have to be corrected for viscosity (Reynold's number?).

JoeF wrote:
The face of the cliff contributes something to the flow field in terms of heat by the sun. Also, the height of the cliff and the cliff's verticality help to form a profile of flow different from low-angled smooth hills; just how much front-of-cliff windshear/rotor and rotor-calm occurs during certain times of day with certain meta ambient wind speeds?

Those are the really hard questions, and I don't know how they can be answered except from experience. I believe the wind data that I showed above was taken at the Gliderport itself. The actual wind direction and strength at the site could vary considerably from that plot.

JoeF wrote:
Was she trained well for examining specialized wind gradients?

I don't know for sure, but I've been told that she was trained by the Torrey Pines concession.

JoeF wrote:
I am wondering what the schedule is for release of captured-rotated-heated bubbles that are perhaps low-hugging the cliff are? Sporadic complex wind shears could be occurring when most everything else is seemingly smooth beyond the active temporary regions. Some events could simply wrap a non-airframed gliding parachute into wads.

I'll bet there's a complex mathematical model out there that attempts to predict these things. I'll also bet that the math involved would be beyond what I'd want to tackle. But with your mathematical background Joe ... maybe you could really do something with it. :thumbup:

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 Post subject: Re: Paragliding Fatality at Torrey - May 12, 2012
PostPosted: Thu May 17, 2012 10:39 am 
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SamKellner wrote:
Thanks for the link to the pgforum. I figured they would have a discussion.

They are saying that the wind was due West with some South component at times.

They could really benefit by seeing Bob's charts on the wind direction and velosity, and approximate location.

I'm not sure if posting a link to our HG forum would be the correct thing to do??

I think it would be a great thing to do. I had an account there, but when I just went back to log in, it failed. Maybe my account got stale? If anyone's got an active account on that site, please feel free to post a link to this topic. Here's the link: http://ushawks.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1031

SamKellner wrote:
What really gets me is, how many US hang pilots have been H-3 for >10yr and dream about flying Torrey, knowing it is out of the question.

That bugs me too. And the concessioinaire uses that to turn prospective hang gliding pilots into paragliding pilots:

Quote:
"Howdy. So you'd like to fly a hang glider here at Torrey? Well, it will take you several years of dedicated training to fly a hang glider here. But if you want to sign up for our P1 package, we can get you in the air in a few days ... maybe even today. What do you say?"

That's what's happened to the sport of hang gliding in San Diego. It's been decimated. The SDHGPA is almost exclusively a paragliding club, and that's what forced me to start the Torrey Hawks. Unfortunately, the same thing is happening nationally with USHPA (no support for the Torrey Hawks on the Soaring Council, passing SOP changes forcing hang gliding clubs to allow paragliding, etc). That's what's forcing me to start the US Hawks.

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 Post subject: Re: Paragliding Fatality at Torrey - May 12, 2012
PostPosted: Thu May 17, 2012 11:55 am 
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bobk wrote:
SamKellner wrote:
They could really benefit by seeing Bob's charts on the wind direction and velosity, and approximate location.

I'm not sure if posting a link to our HG forum would be the correct thing to do??

I think it would be a great thing to do. I had an account there, but when I just went back to log in, it failed. Maybe my account got stale? If anyone's got an active account on that site, please feel free to post a link to this topic. Here's the link: http://ushawks.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1031

Oops. I had used the older password. I was able to post to the site at this address:

http://www.paraglidingforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=47773

Here''s my post:

Quote:
Plaikind wrote:
The conditions were nearly ideal 9 - 10 MPH winds out of the west with, I believe, perhaps a small southerly component.

I captured the wind history from the local site and published a brief analysis at the US Hawks Hang Gliding forum:

  http://ushawks.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1031 (scroll down to the wind plot and image of the site)

From the wind history and the cliff configuration (shown in that topic), I believe it was a northwest wind that may have contributed to the death. Those conclusions are certainly not definitive, but they might help shed a little more light on what happened. Any feedback on that analysis is welcome, but please remember that I'm currently limited to one post per day on this forum ... so please be patient.

lvcat2004 wrote:
BTW, I have always been bothered by "tandem always have the right of way" rule at Torrey, and I believe that rule was still there when I flew a couple of months ago, but I cannot find that rule on their website anymore. Did that rule go away now? (as it should have long time ago).

http://sandiegofreeflight.com/jm170/ind ... site-rules

I was bothered by that rule as well. I believe it was put into place by David Jebb who operated that site for nearly 10 years. I defeated him as USHPA Regional Director in December of 2008 and he left Torrey Pines within a few weeks of that defeat. I believe the tandem right of way rule was repealed after a collision between two paragliders which was believed to be related to that rule a few months after Jebb had left. That's one of several improvements that I believe has resulted from my efforts at reforming that site. There's still a lot more work to be done.

P.S. I posted this just a few minutes ago, and I can already see the "haters" dropping my Karma. This does not contribute to helpful dialog, and it does not reflect well on the hospitality of this forum.

Regarding my "PS", they've got a "Karma" system on that web site which has the effect of suppressing unpopular viewpoints. People who don't like what you say (or just don't like you) can give you a negative rating which can eventually limit your ability to post. Right now, I think I can only make one post per day. There are times when such limits are needed, but by basing it on an opinion poll, they're basically ending up with "mob rule". I think the moderators at that site should use their own judgement of a person's posts to override the "Karma" system when they feel that someone is being intentionally or unjustly suppressed.

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