I think there is something here that may help someone else new to pod harnesses avoid the accident I had.
Last Sunday 13.3.16 I arrived to fly at Treak Cliff in Derbyshire. I was using an Ozone Swift 2 wing and an Advance Impress 3 harness. I measured the wind speed at 8-10 mph, and it was pretty much straight on the hill. It was sunny with high broken cloud. There were a lot of other pilots flying, and there was little sign of air turbulence.
I was wearing a chest mounted Go Pro - which has helped piece together what happened.
I reverse launched and flew with the hill on my LHS. I look up to check the wing before leaving the ground and immediately after and it looked normal. I found my pod harness with my foot and pushed into it. I remember on that first beat (40 seconds) that something did not feel right, from memory I think it was that I felt I was losing height more than I would expect against a glider ahead of me. I made my first turn to fly back with the hill on RHS. I remember I flew into very gentle thermal turbulence. I had a front edge collapse (all but 20% of the RHS) at about 5m off the ground. The wing recovered but was diving strongly for the hill on the RHS. I think I has pumped the LHS of the wing immediately after the collapse. I impacted the hill on my right side, legs still in the pod. This was less than 2 minutes into the flight. It was only 3 seconds from the tuck to hitting the ground. I fractured a vertebra but it is apparently 'stable' so I have been very lucky.
Before I looked at the Go Pro footage I wondered how the front collapse could have happened. I know my glider. There was hardly any thermal activity & I was not flying in any lee turbulence. All the other pilots were flying smoothly. However the Go Pro showed something very wrong. It showed that I unknown to me I was flying on full speed bar. The chest position of the camera shows the 'looped up' A risers on both sides, and speed bar pulleys touching. The video also clearly shows that the speed system is free (off) as I reverse launched.
What I think happened is that I got the heel of one of my boots accidently around the stage 2 speed bar strap inside the pod as I pushed into it (I did not have hooks on my boots so it was not caught that way). This would have engaged full bar. I am used to and happy with flying my Ozone Swift 2 so I know with hindsight that the speed bar would have needed some force to push on, however I am new to the pod harness and therefore not used to the 'normal' force needed to stretch the neoprene of the pod to get into it. Also my attention at the time would have been on flying in a relatively congested airspace.
What I find scary here is that it is not obvious looking up at the glider that the speed bar is full on. With your legs covered by the pod harness, it is only the speed bar pulleys and the looped material of the A risers that show it, and for these you have to look down. So I was flying on full bar and flying at low altitude, something I would never knowingly do because of the risk of front collapse. Also when the collapse came and the wing recovered, because it was on full bar it dived more violently into the hill than it would have with no speed bar.
My Advance Impress 3 manual does not highlight the risk of catching the speed bar system when getting into the pod. I had some feedback on the Derbyshire Soaring Club Facebook page from someone who had done something similar. He had engaged stage 1 of the speed bar accidently when getting in to his pod harness. He had exactly the same harness as me. I am no expert in pod harnesses, but looking at my Advance Impress 3 pod I can see how it happened.
When I next fly in my pod harness (hopefully I shall be able to in 6 weeks !!) I will be mega-aware of what is going on with the speed bar. And I will also be very interested in how other makes of harness channel the speed bar lines through the pod. I may have been stupid and or inexperienced here but maybe this account will mean someone else could avoid a similar accident.
I've been very lucky to get off so lightly.
Mike
Hi Mike,
Thank you so much for a detailed report and thank you for posting it on this forum as unlike the FB page, here is where it can be documented to educate future pilots. So thanks for posting. Plus being the Advance dealer for the Peaks I'm personally interested.
Can I ask, where did you get the harness from? If it was a dealer did they give instruction on the usage? One thing I always recommend to anyone flying a pod is the bungee around your foot method. This helps you lift the front of the bag up and makes for a very quick and easy transition to flying. Otherwise you'll be faffing about blindly trying to get your legs into the harness. Or taking your hands off the controls to hand feed your legs into the harness.
You mentioned that you were also relatively new to the harness. One other thing that I recommend to every pilot is to have somewhere at home that you can dangle from to practice the transition and also to check it's correctly adjusted. I find it amazing that so many pilots have a blind faith with their harnesses in not periodically hanging/testing from home. Not sure if you done this?
Hi Lee
Thanks for that. I did get this pod from a dealer & good friend of mine and they did fully explain the harness, but did not highlight the speed strap issue. I do not attach any blame to them, and to be fair I have seen no literature anywhere that has highlighted this issue yet (not in the harness manual or any online video tutorials).
I agree with you very much about not having to use a hand to help get into the harness, with the reduction in control that this can mean. I need to perfect a solid technique for getting into the pod without using my hands. The elastic bungee will be one aid I will look at.
I set the harness up very carefully whilst it was suspended in my garage, and used someone else to give me feedback on the harness attitude with my sat in it. The harness manual is quite detailed about set up. The Flybubble pod harness video recommends taking off with weight well forward and legs together to avoid slipping down in the harness (as it makes it cleaner for the foot to locate the pod). I've always used t his technique in non pod harnesses as good practice. I think possibly the thing that I could not simulate in the garage hanging test was the pod being blown back in the airstream when flying . This makes it perhaps harder to locate with the foot than you'd expect form a hang test.
Mike