Crestline Soaring Society

That reminds me of a quote:
"If you're faced with a forced landing, fly the thing as far into the crash as possible."
> > > - Bob Hoover

peter, lets hear the logpile landing story.

watched "the rob" landing midday tandem when at the last second before flare, one wing stalled early. the basetube hand flashed up to the downtube and simultaneously flared hard on the stalled side. turned a potential passenger whack into a non event.

...wouldn't have worked in my case: Mt Morrel in Montana say 1986, the bail-out is a swamp, which sounds nice in this heat, but it had already eaten a vario of mine and it's a tough 1/2mi walk to the truck, the desired LZ is uncontrolled strip- green as a a golf course nearby parking. In between them 1.5mi of Lodgepole Pines... 70+ft below their tops is the actual swamp, recently logged, possibly by mule (it's dry Aug- Nov), they left seed trees, usually the tallest ones, evenly spaced maybe every 50ft, also they had yet to drag the felled trees out and they were in piles that's right I ended up between the bail-out and the strip. I was flying a week-old Sport 167 and maybe had 50hrs HGing but snuck through the trees which was my only goal as you don't stick to lodgepoles, you hit them and then fall or at best they break and skewer you or your wing so I'm going fast as I kinda slipped my final, but at least near ground headed over water and snags for what seemed like forever aimed at a 30ft log-pile... I went right up to the top where the wing stopped flying, my feet both found logs and my basetube collappsed gently right in the middle on a third, the highest log in the pile, and I was fine.
I thanked my lucky stars which I admit to using a few more times back when I used to fly more, (glad fly-in was fun, wish I'd been there). Took me an hour to get out, but this is when the Walkman Sport first came out, (yellow), and I had tunes.
-Peter S

Thanks Mike. It was my lucky day. I learned that trick from watching other pilots in similar predicaments. Don't tell anyone, but a few weeks later I overcompensated for that fast landing and came in slow, too slow. Pancaked in to the joy of many eteamers and took out a down tube.