Very good information.

So you don’t fly at min sink speed in thermals?

@@martind5596 Not if it's turbulent and the lift is strong. Especially in a rigid wing.

That was the right thing to do! Modern gliders are very stable and recover on their own.

🙏🏽

Well held sir.

Thanks for sharing your experience! Yes, they are part of hang gliding unless you only choose to fly smooth conditions.

Hahaha!!!! Sick Bastard

But mate, who could anticipate such a nose dive? Just no reaction time to let loose the VG. It was incredibly quick.

​ @Bari FPV You know, there's a reason why so many pilots fly with a VG rope wrapped around their finger. Exactly because of this - such things can happen too abruptly and too quickly. And you wouldn't have time to react, to think... If you at least managed to cancel VG it would help you a lot.

@@StepanZubashev I agree, I am not disagreeing but it was a split second thing do you think we can react this fast? If you notice Soham's posture hardly even changed. He got pushed over the bar just barely and when the glider came back up he hardly moved. So based on that I was saying even if we were anticipating such an event the reaction time isn't enough to release the VG. You could perhaps dial it down already if the air is super turbulent, just my thought.

@@BariFPV Yeah, I got it. It was fast. You may not react fast enough to avoid this dive, but... The dive might be just a beginning. Just for instance, many years ago I was flying straight in -5 m\s with 4/4 VG. At some point I got myself into an abrupt dive... dunno, maybe -8 m\s. I figured out it wouldn't end up well.. but I did nothing... So at some point the gliders stopped diving and started pitching fiercely. I couldn't do anything because the glider didn't listen to me. So at the toppest point It has stalled. I was lucky enough and I got into an another dive. And then another pitch, another stall, another dive. At the 3rd try I managed to stop this theatre of horror. I was lucky that the glider didn't destroy itself in a stumble. I "spent" 350m for this air-circus. -20m\s, +11m\s. "Interesting" experience. Without 4/4 of VG, I think, it would be just an another one "bad dive" to complain about. Had I cancelled VG would it be much smoother and the glider wouldn't stall at all. But I didn't do it... I was thinking that the air is smooth. I wasn't prepared to such an event. And I didn't remember about VG. I found out that it was with full VG only when in finished. So some preparation is important. We can't think really sober when it happens. And when it happens we need to react as quickly as we can.

@@BariFPV forgot to add: it's much simpler to release the VG when it's wrapped over your finger than when you need to catch it on the fly in the rough air with one hand on the speedbar controlling the glider :)

It's an Icaro 4Fight, may not be available anymore. Helmet quality is a contentious topic among pilots so I don't want to give any advice, but go for something that provides solid protection, is light and doesn't obstruct your view much. Having a visor is important for me because I don't like flying with any sunglasses.

Yikes, those flights really make you question your sanity in strapping yourself to a kite and jumping off a mountain.

Yes exactly, when you have glider setup to perform good with slack VG, why the hell would anyone market: "you can handle (turn) this glider with more VG". This actualy means the opposite: this glider is not performing well while climbing and you need to use VG to do well. Which is bad! Also just a note to this video, airspeed (10km more from trim) to familiarize yourself with thermal nature is a good mindset to go.

Yeah, with the earth warming turbulence is bound to increase especially in summer. But there are still safe times to fly outside of peak summer. And less turbulence the further you are from peak heating latitude.

​@@sohamhanggliding Its nothing to do with 'the Earth warming'. It's all to do with the adiabatic lapse rate on the particular day....which determines the thermal strength. You can have days when its 45C+ on the ground and the air is not very unstable...with weak climbs.

It doesn't sound as if you were listening to his words during the video.

Yup, Owens Valley in the summer. Crazy strong lift and then maybe over the falls. On my first day in the '91 Nationals, I thought it cool to climb out through the center of the gaggle and take one more turn brushing the bottom of the cloud but the cloud had another idea for me and I had some moments of terror inside that cloud while I unwillingly gained lots of altitude in a chaotic way. I got spit out of the side of the cloud at around 18,000' and saw Steve Fossett fly by out front ahead and below in his sailplane. We waved. I was too shaken up to continue on the task. But I came back for the rest of the contest days.

Definitely there is, we adjust bank and turn radius to thermals dynamically as well as adjust speed on glide to match lift/sink. Sometimes the bumps are too sudden to adjust to, as in this case.

what would you say it's the best way of reacting to that? To be honest, I would've pushed the speedbar. Why is that bad?

The glider is already recovering from a stall so pushing out in that situation will make recovery harder. The best response is just hold on and let the glider recover on its own, then pull in to get more control to be prepared for more turbulence. Hanggliders recover from stalls pretty much on their own. I imagine paragliders need a lot more active input for recovery.

​@@sohamhanggliding so let me understand correctly, if your angle was slightly worse, you could have gone into a tumble right? Why not react immediately and push the bar slightly out to avoid the Glider completely face down and possible tumble? Someone saying for you to push the bar in, but pointing downwards like that pushing the bar in to increase the speed when everything is vertical, would accentuate the problem and possibly cause the wing to tumble.

@@LaurenMartins - the nose is down, but the airspeed is, at that initial nose drop, low Also the sail is not under load and you are the heaviest part of the aircraft. By pushing back you send the c of g back and the c of g wants to lead the way. If you throw a dart backwards, the weight at the front of the dart will want to overtake the back. So in an extreme nose drop like this one, keep your weight forward so that the centre of gravity is in front of the centre of drag. If you are quick, you could even pull the bar in at that point. Pushing the bar out can lead to the c of g being behind the centre of drag and inertia will want to get it back in front, and with an aft c of g the quickest way to achieve that is by tumbling, leading to structural failure and you being the first to the scene of the crash. HTH.

@@RogerM9 So I assume it’s like a fixed wing aircraft. You really want airspeed over the wing and pushing out would increase AofA and cause a deeper stall ? Kind of similar to fixed wing spin training by the sounds of it ?

Why? There are far more pg pilots at this site flying more frequently and going XC

@@sergeig685 I was commenting on the report from the pilot "turbulent" and we all know that a hang glider does not fold together in turbulent air like a paraglider. The fact that there were more pgs at the site does not legitimate that paragliders are "safer". This depends to a great extent on the pilot's competence and experience and also whether he/she was in the turbulent region

@@skyout19 Obviously paragliders are not rigid wings. Yes, they collapse, that's just part of the process. Not claiming they are safer. What I'm telling you is that paragliders do not make such big deal out of turbulent air. It is HGs that have a lot of misconceptions about them. PGs are always the first ones up at the site and the last ones to land. And unlike HGs they fly XC not just sit in the house thermal for an hour and land at the bottom. If you wanna fly distance you will have to fly in active air and you will have collapses, it’s just part of flying. The wings go though certification process of how they recover from various form of collapses without pilot input and the pilots go through SIV training to develop confidence and skill on how to manage them

Haha I rarely forget to tuck the hoodie in, if I'm wearing one, this was one of those times.

Wow, that's some extreme wind shear turbulence!

Hey we’re generation of safe spaces and emotional breakdowns. Take it easy, old timer 😂