GASCo Safety Evening

By Andy Archer on  February 12, 2024 12:22

GASCO Safety evening - Monday 19th Feb, 7:30 to 9:30 pm at the Sea View Inn.

This is a joint event with Bowland Forest Gliding Club and is a safety talk delivered by GASCOo (General Aviation Safety Council).

These are very informative, interactive and thought provoking events.   This will be a tailored event covering topics across both our disciplines including Threat & Error Management, Loss of Control accidents, Electronic Conspicuity, Human Factors, we are also looking to have the opportunity to discuss the local issues, particularly the shared airspace around Parlick.

It is likely to be a packed room so turn up early!

gasco

Safety Notes January 2024

By Brian Stewart on  January 9, 2024 16:16

Happy new year everyone, and let’s look forward to a record-breaking year of banging thermals and wide open skies. Here’s a page from BHPA to get you ready for the coming season:

And here is some wise advice shamelessly cut and pasted from Guy Richardson in the DSC page:

1: Currency – this is the biggest cause of accidents, how long is it since you flew last? Are you desperate to fly? Is the weather going to give us a quick ‘Gap’? Being rusty is very common, Even the instructors go out and do a little practice. Make the time on a dry day (HAHAHA) to get your wing out and just do an hour ground handling – one hour is far more than you’d ever do sitting on a hill. Team up with a CP Buddy from the group and have a little fun. If you’re not sure where to go then give your coach a shout….. they’re not flying either!
2: Weather: Cold systems and slightly off directions tempt us to fly on a beautiful clear day, couple this with I’m rusty and it wont be pleasant. Watch the wind speeds at height, look out for the wave effect too. As it gets warmer we also have the land starting to release energy, when it starts its violent ‘Spring Thermals’ sometimes they feel like a small bomb has gone off! Be very aware, traditionally it’s the time of year in the club where we have the most incidents.
3: Kit: bring it out of the bag and fly after 3 months not flying and it’s a recipe for disaster. Do a full wing inspection – your lines shrink slightly in storage so it affects the handling of your wing, all the more reason to stretch those lines ground handling! Check your Harness, defluff your Velcro, extract your reserve to check it and while you’re at it, repack it! You’d be amazed how many reserves repackers find incorrectly installed! Check your carabiners (5 years life span). Charge and discharge your radio, make sure you have your Time out set (TOT) – normally 30 seconds to 1 minute. Check your Helmet for cracks.
Good  - all ready….Me too! Don’t forget the repack event on 11th February and register if needed, there’s only a few places left.
IMSAFE
I – Ilness
M- Medication
S – Stress
A – Alcohol (& Drugs)
F – Fatigue
E – Emotion / Eyesight & Observation

Will Geordie Have His Cat Aboard Today?
W – Wind and Weather
G – Glider
H – Helmet
H – Harness
C – Controls
A – All Clear
T – Turn Direction


And finally, to reprise something I wrote about a couple of years ago, take care when people are ground handling/ launching wings. Last Sunday on Winter Hill, conditions were very light, almost not soarable. People were inflating and practising near the edge, and I stood behind someone, not really thinking about the danger. The wing suddenly came down on me, and wrapped some lines around my face. The calm had suddenly become gusty and the wing thrashed around but luckily I had my hand between my face and the lines, so nothing more than a surface scratch. But, the lessons here:

  1. Don’t stand behind people launching or ground handling – if it goes wrong, it’s only going to go one way, into you
  2. When you’re ground handling or launching, be aware of spectators who may stand in the wrong place and put themselves in danger – gently point out the problem to them

I know better, and still got caught out.


Tight lines

Safety Notes October 2023

By Brian Stewart on  October 11, 2023 17:20

Incident

As many of you will know, on Sunday 8th one of our members was seriously injured on the South face of Parlick and airlifted to hospital. We wish him a full and speedy recovery from his injuries.

As we move towards winter, it’s worth analysing in some detail how the weather may have been a significant factor. As the power of the sun to heat the ground reduces, thermal production slows and so the mixing of the layers of air stops happening and a low-level inversion can often last all day. You will often see clouds above whizzing past with little or no wind on the ground early in the day. In summer, vertical mixing of the upper and lower layers usually clears this inversion, but in winter it can lurk undetected. If this layer is below the take off, you may feel this as a sudden increase in wind speed from very light to very strong, possibly with an abrupt change in direction – a clear warning sign. However if the layer is just above take off, you may launch from what feels like a perfect breeze into a nightmare as the friction between the layers of air moving at different speeds and directions creates violent vortices. This can happen at any altitude, but if it’s close to the ground, any collapses induced may be unrecoverable before impact.

Warm southerly airflows are particularly prone to causing this effect as they produce more pronounced inversions, which is significant for our south-facing sites like Parlick and Nonts. An approaching warm front can mean warm air riding over the cooler air near the ground, which exaggerates the inversion Add in the wave influence of upwind hills (Longridge, Standedge) and you get a recipe for extreme turbulence, just where you don’t want it.

Back in the day, we used to just have the TV forecasts and shipping forecasts, so just went out when the weather man (and it was always a man back then) said the magic words ‘light to moderate’ and sometimes had a horrible experience, muttering over our beers about what might have caused it. Now we have incredibly detailed atmospheric models to predict what the wind is going to be doing at every level. The question is how to access and make use of this amazing resource. The ground level wind speeds on the Met Office site, XCWeather etc are only a starting point – if they say too strong, then it’s too strong, but if the numbers are low, it’s vital to look at the upper layers to get an idea of what is going on above our heads. This isn’t the place for an in-depth lesson on weather forecasting, and I’m not the person to do it, but here’s a few take-aways from the conditions on Sunday.

This is the RASP tephigram custom sounding for 1100 BST on Sunday 8th October for Chipping (CHP) Note the low level inversion where the air temperature increases with height and how the wind changes direction .

 

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Here’s another view of the 1100 data, provided by NOAA and analysed by Neil Charles:

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Here we can see that the wind was forecast light SE at ground level, fresh S at take off and veering to strong SW just above.

Other sources of data include Windy.com and the Windy.app, Ventusky, which have free versions that provide this data. There are many others. My advice is to find one that you can learn how to use, and visit it regularly before flying. Look at them on the days before too, see how the forecasts change. Where possible examine the different data sources (ECMWF, Met Office, NOAA, GFS etc.) – the more they agree, the more confidence you can place in the prediction.

So how do we use these data in order to make out flying safer?

We are the pilots, and we are responsible for our own decisions; there is no launch marshal or air traffic controller to make us see sense. Here are some tips:

ALWAYS check winds at higher altitudes – all year round. Don't just look at ground level winds before flying. We don't fly at ground level, so it is silly to only look at ground level winds. Even on days when there is no inversion there can often be surprisingly stronger winds at take off height or higher.

In summer you will mostly get away with only looking at ground level winds, as in summer the difference between ground and upper winds is generally not great for the reasons given above. But why not spend five minutes looking, it may save you a wasted trip to a blown out hill.

In winter you won't get away with only checking ground level winds for long. Even on days when there is little or no inversion, the difference in winter between ground level and higher level winds can be dangerously high. Add an inversion around hill hight and danger is multiplied. 

The wind speed and directions on soundings can be a little awkward and imprecise to read; however using websites like www.ventusky.com you can check the wind speed and direction of all northern England at 10m, 100m, 250m, 500m, 750m, 1000m, 1500m etc. You don't have to check every altitude, but you should check 100m, 500m (take off altitude) and 750m at say 10am, 1pm and 16pm. When you get familiar with a website or app like Ventusky you will be able to check the winds in five minutes. It is a lot quicker than recovering in a hospital bed for four months.

Using the free version of an app like Windy.app you can get a spot forecast for Parlick landing field showing the wind at all altitudes in about 60 seconds, as below:

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Neil Charles is currently developing a tool to show graphically the wind speed and direction at our sites and elsewhere. Watch this space for news

Don't use RASP for wind speed in winter. In summer time the RASP parameters “BL Avg. Wind” and “Wind at BL Top” are excellent forecasts. But in winter these parameters are often useless as the Boundary Layer is so low. If there is an inversion at 900ft then BL top will be 900ft, so “BL Avg. wind” will be an average of the wind from the ground level to 900ft – not much use when you are taking off at 1300ft.The decision to take off is every pilots personal responsibility, every pilot should be checking the weather before they fly. Don't rely on others, don't fly like sheep!

Brian Stewart and Phil Wallbank, with contributions from Gordon Rigg (DSC).

Safety Notes September 2023

By Brian Stewart on  September 19, 2023 11:30

It’s been a fairly quiet year as far as incidents go so far . . . Probably tempting fate by writing that, but I don’t believe in that nonsense, so there.

Equipment Checks

We all do these, don’t we? Daily inspection, pre-flight checks etc. One of our members received a harness with his reserve re-packed back from a well-known PG service centre. During a pre-flight check the bridle zipper was seen to be starting to open and was re-closed. This happened again at the next flight. Further checking showed a mistake in re-packing the reserve and closing the container. AFAIK this is still unresolved between the pilot and the service centre. This shows the importance of doing your own inspections and checks every time you launch. You know it makes sense.

Another recent incident involved a near-miss for a member when one set of risers became trapped inside the carabiner of the opposite riser. Fortunately, he was sufficiently aware to abort the launch before getting lifted too far, but still got dragged. The carabiners in this case were the screwgate type, not the more common twist-lock gate, which require two separate actions to unlock the gate (slide and twist). The screwgates on both carabiners had not been tightened up to lock, so were both free to open. Again, this shows how important it is to include such a check in your list if you have these carabiners. Also remember the advice about replacing carabiners every 5 years or 500 flight hours. As they are subject to repeated load cycles the alloys used in them will work-harden over time and become brittle.

Calder Valley Search and Rescue Team

Earlier this year the CVSRT got in touch to find out more about our sport and the equipment we use. It’s the eastern sites like Blackstone Edge, Nont Sarah’s and Pule that are more likely to be within their region, and it’s the recent increase in use of these sites that has brought us to their attention. They had a couple of calls from concerned members of the public reporting PGs in distress. Despite searching, including with helicopter, they found nothing but wanted to know more.

Mark Shaw, BHPA Technical Officer came up to their Mytholmroyd HQ las week and gave them a presentation about our sport which I attended, covering all aspects from speed flying to powered hang gliding. It was interesting to find how little they knew of what we do – the outsider’s view that we’re a bunch of reckless thrill-seekers wasn’t so prevalent (much more respect for us as fellow users of the outdoors) – but the realisation that we actually fly distances was quite an eye-opener for some. A useful lesson learned that our activities are not confined to specific locations. Their HQ is very impressive, and the team all turned out in their mountain rescue kit – they are a very professional organisation with 45-50 registered responders with a wealth of medical knowledge and expertise between them. One subject that we discussed at length was the issue of alerting soaring pilots to the arrival of a helimed. The MRT members all carry smoke flares – these are deployed to guide the heli to the spot and indicate wind conditions. The suggestion that one could be set off as soon as the heli was requested will be carried forward by Mark to the BHPA with a view to establishing a code of practice.

This was a very useful evening, and was great for making contact with the people who do such great work on the ground saving lives.

Tight lines, everyone