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Pilot Details

Age: 52 Weight: 165 Gender: Highest rating held at the time of the incident: Pilot experience level:

Gear Details

Wing Brand: Model: Silex Medium Size: Paramotor Frame: Airfer Tornado with

Incident Details

January 1, 2006 Location of the incident: , Type of Incident:

This narrative was submitted by Bruce Brown, the Fly-In organizer. It was Sunday afternoon, the final day of a four day fly-in. Approximately 40 of the 68 registered pilots for the weekend had packed up and left for home.

Several of us were commenting on how good the weather had been for the entire weekend and that there had been no injuries and very little equipment damage. Most of the remaining pilots were packing up to go home. Wally Shilts launched with his yellow Silex paraglider and Airfer Tornado and Dan Kriseler launched with his yellow Silex paraglider and the Paralite Sky Cruiser trike. They started to do some synchronized flying doing wingovers, power turns, and flying along side one another.

At one point, they were trying to touch wing tips and Dan got on the radio and told Wally the air was too trashy. A spectator said to me that they seemed to be flying awfully aggressive. I told the spectator that it would get worse because they would start to push each other as their time in the air continued. At that point I got on the radio and told Wally and Dan: ” Listen guys, have fun but fly safe, please fly safe”.

Wally was flying at an attitude of approximately 75 feet into the northwest wind when he induced a hard left turn banking wing over ending up facing down-wind. The wing was about 80 degrees from horizontal, and Wally appeared to be almost even with the center of the wing in the left turn wingover. At that point, both the wing and Wally appeared to drop or slide down toward the ground about 30 to 40 feet in this high wingover position. I did not see any deformation of the paraglider or loss of pressure in any of the cells. The wing then started to fly and surged ahead of Wally. Wally went to full throttle, but there was not enough clearance to pendulum under the wing and fly out. Instead, Wally flew at full throttle with the wing in a surge above and in front of him right into the ground. Since he was on the downswing side of the pendulum under the wing, he may have been doing 50 to 60 miles per hour. We were not able to see Wally’s encounter with the ground because he landed in soy beans about 3.5 feet tall.

As several of us ran to Wally, the engine continued to run at high RPM. The first person to reach Wally found and pressed the stop button on the throttle handle. Wally never showed any signs of consciousness after the accident. He was air lifted to a Toledo hospital and died about four hours later.

The attached picture (above) was taken a split second before Wally impacted the ground. You are looking at the bottom of the Silex wing.

1. Aerobatics which included wingovers and power turns
2. Low Altitude flying with no safety margin for error
3. Flying at 2:00 PM on a sunny day with unpredictable thermal activity
4. Flying in front of spectators and another pilot that seemed to stimulate aggressive piloting

Flight Window: Wind Speed: Type: Phase of Flight: Type of Injury: Collateral Damage: Analysis of the incident (additional input by the incident investigation team): Photos (if available):

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