Video - Radical Lofting On The Snow

[ricki]

I asked for input from glider pilots on what they saw in the video. Kenny out of Utah came up with the following:

Originally Posted by fernmanus

There are a few things I noticed:
1. He has an old kite with no depower, so he had no way of controlling the altitude of his flight. When a gust picked him up, he had to go with it or quickly detach himself from the kite.
2. He was panicking while in the air. The panic was evident in his body gyrations. Fortunately, he managed to keep the kite overhead most of the time and even more fortunately, he did not land on one of those massive boulders nearby.
3. He landed fairly hard. An experienced glider steers the kite quickly back and forth to slow descent and land as soft as a butterfly.
4. He goes uphill. I have had this experience a few times when I have been out on a very large kite and the wind picked up. Fortunately, I had a lot of depower, so I could control my altitude. Guys like Alex Petersen or Billy Bordy have used these type of conditions to go well over 100 feet above the ground. The difference is that they make a decision instead of unintentionally going high - plus they do it with control.
5. The best part of the video is the guys freaking out in the background. They sound like crazed tribal warriors.

[ricki]

Here is a diagram of ridge lift from a glider site. Given how rare this is for kiters and common for soaring gliders, I suspect there is more to grabbing a strong area of lift or standing pressure wave than readily comes to mind.


From: [http://www.drjack.info/INFO/DELMONTE/toc.page.html

When gliders drift downwind out of the area or lift, they slip into areas of wind shadow induced turbulence or rotor. They sink out there and come to earth sometimes hard. You can see this in both video clips. Soaring gliders work hard to not drift out of the lift band and into the area of rotor. If they do damaged gear and injury can easily result.

[ricki]

Has anyone else seen or heard of an uplift lofting case like what happened to Erik and Malik? Considering how coming gliders soar conditions like this it is surprising and fortunate, it is as rare as it seems to be for kiters.