Crestline Soaring Society

sad news indeed. That's 2 this season out there. Is the Sylmar LZ that crazy? Just bad luck?

-Dave

Damn,

I'd been wanting to fly with this pilot.

His name was Jeff Craig. I trained with him a bit at Dockweiler and swapped some emails about doing some computer work with me in his spare time. He was a super nice guy who was hanging out at Dockweiler having fun and brushing up on his landing skills while working toward his hang 3. He was in no way a hot dog or reckless.

The coroner is investigating a heart attack. Figuratively, it was a pretty big one.

Wow, what bad news on the heels of the other pilot lost at Sylmar. That appears to be a really rough area he came down in, I imagined he somehow got too low on base and couldn't clear the boulders and make the turn to final. Perhaps that's incorrect if he had a heart issue.

After some long phone conversations with Jeff's S.O. we concluded that he'd had some medical condition occur while in flight and became too impaired to land safely. Unfortunately, Sylmar is a tight LZ with few options for bail-outs. I guess the only other alternative is to deploy one's reserve given enough altitude.

I was just cruizing HG websites and found this. We just finished a year, 2007, with no HG deaths in the US. Now this, a rash of fatal accidents. Are we getting lax? Let's all be extra carefull, please.

http://ahga.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2860&sid=19

I saw Jeffs crash and it didn't appear he was having any problems other than being to low in heavy sink. There was a comment about earlier heart problems. I didn't see the down wind but in his base turn he was really sinking fast,his final was smooth and he leveled his wings perfectly but was still sinking like a stone.I'm a pg pilot and don't know much about landing hang gliders,but if he could have extended his base another 15 feet he would have come in on level in the normal landing area,off the side of the rocky area of the wash.I'm thinking he did what he had to in adnormally heavy sink to keep from draging a wing tip. I didn,t know Jeff personally,he was well liked and will be missed. my condolances to familey and friends.

Jeff did not fly with a GPS - it was in his car. The only instrument he had was a 4010 which does not record altitude, wind speed, etc.

I've downloaded and examined numerous of my flights from a 5030 with 1 second recording intervals. The variations make it difficult to draw any accurate conclusions.