http://ozreport.com/18.107#1

http://ozreport.com/18.108#2

Joe Schmucker <<wingloader>>
writes:

As you probably know, I crashed on the second day of the ECC comp.
I was very lucky and crashed into very soft, recently planted soil. If you've
seen the video of my crash, it was pretty obvious it was pilot error. Davis
goaded me into posting the video or I would not have posted it. I didn't think
there was anything to learn from it other than Joe can make a crater. I've had a
lot of people thank me for posting it. Thank you all for your kind words.

I want to thank Adam and Sunny for racing to my aid (and several others too). I
hope you didn't end up with poison ivy!

There were a couple things that I learned from this event:

1) A glider is very heavy when it is on top of you.

2) A camel back is something I will always carry. I needed it to rinse out my
eyes after plowing.

3) Make sure your phone and/or radio is easily accessible in case you need to
get to it to call for help. In my case, it was in my front left pocket. I would
not have been able to get to it if I had broken my right arm.

4) Don't trust that a wind mill is facing into the wind. I always thought that
the gearbox portion of the windmill was on the down wind side. I had a down wind
landing on Day 1 because I relied solely on what I thought was the best wind
direction indication a pilot could hope to have.

I once paid money to Mike Barber to tell me that a large percentage of crashes
occur because people are lazy and try to land close to a road etc. so they don't
have to carry their equipment that extra 100 yards. I wish I had listened to
that advice.

I appreciate that nobody said, "You know, you may have fared better if you lost
some weight." I am pretty sure that some of you thought that but out of courtesy
did not say it. I am 6'4" and I have a huge cranium! So, I am by default a "big
guy". We all take safety very seriously. We sometime screw up and pay some dues.
In my case, I could stand to lose about 30 pounds. That could make a significant
difference in my wing loading and my stall speed. So, I have committed to myself
that I will not fly until I get rid of the those extra pounds. Here's my real
litmus test. If I feel uncomfortable enough in my appearance that I won't take
my shirt off when setting up my glider, I'm not ready to fly.

I think the extra weight would be a positive in the air. But when I come in to
land, my ground speed is much faster than I like it to be. It seems like I used
to come in to land and the glider would slow down a lot more before it was time
to flare. I see other people land and it seems like their ground speed is way
slower than mine. I've no idea if it is real or in my mind. Could my track log
show ground speed as I am bleeding off speed to flare? I should check that out
and see.

Thank you all for making my time at Highland Aerosports a great time. They were
two very memorable days and I did have a personal best distance on Day 1 coming
in about 2km short of goal.