This is the story of a poor landing that I had recently and what
the cause was.

The wind was out of the west at 16 mph, the thermals were ratty, but strong
enough to get us up as we quickly drifted to the east. The air was turbulent
below a thousand feet and especially near the tree line. I could see from the
wind socks that on the ground the wind was much less, maybe only five mph.

I'd been flying for a while and getting up from 600' AGL and as high at 3,800'
so I knew that there was a mix of lift and slink and ratty edges to the
thermals. When I was down low enough that I didn't want to try to get back up
again I headed to the down wind side (east) of the large Quest Air landing
field. Unfortunately it is a lot longer in the north south direction than the
east west direction, still it is quite possible to land before the half way
point in the field. There is also an east west runway that gives you a long
clear area to land.

Since I knew that there would be a steep wind gradient mixed with turbulence and
lift as I came in I wanted to come in with plenty of extra speed. I rocked up in
my Covert harness at about twenty five feet AGL and kept two hands on the base
tube to make sure that I was pulled in. I have seen way way too many approaches
with the pilots going slow because they don't pull in enough when their hands
are on the down tubes.

As I came closer to the ground gliding toward the center of the field and going
west on the east west runway, the glider made a sudden drop when I was about
eight feet off the ground. Whether this is just the gradient or rotor off the
trees is hard to say. But it felt like I was about to be smacked into the ground
(which is actually a bit difficult to do).

I instinctively let go of the base tube as I didn't want my hands on the base
tube as I didn't want them there when it hit the ground.

Now, of course, once I let go and was no longer pulling in, the base tube swung
forward and the glider went to trim. I pitched down as the Covert doesn't keep
you straight up and was hanging slightly head up.

I saw the base bar in front of me as I was about two or three feet off the
ground. I reach for the bar but couldn't grab it. The glider landed itself just
fine. Unfortunately I bruised my hand in my attempt to grab the base bar.

Now if I had transitioned to one hand on the base tube and one hand on a down
tube, then I would have instinctively let go of the base tube, but been able to
keep myself upright holding onto the one downtube and would have grabbed the
other downtube with my free land. This would have put me in a better landing
position.

I was over doing it with both hands on the base tube pulling in a bit too hard.
I needed to relax a little bit and realize that one hand on the base tube would
have been enough.

Richard Lovelace and Greg Dinauer landed after me and they experienced the same
sudden drop that I did. Rich was on the downtubes and flying a little too slow.
I didn't see Greg's landing. The next day the winds were west 20 to 25 mph and
Larry Bunner decided not to land at Quest Air but in a much bigger field to the
east.