Return to the incident list: Incident List Stuck Right Brake Toggle, Locked Right Turn PPG Type: Type of Injury:
Pilot Details
Age: 30 Weight: 205 Gender: Highest rating held at the time of the incident: Pilot experience level:
Gear Details
Wing Brand: Model: Dudek Hadron 24 Size: Paramotor Frame: SCOUT Carbon w/ Vittorazi Moster 185 with
Incident Details
January 4, 2016 Location of the incident: , Type of Incident:
I was flying this evening testing avband comms with the ground crew against the Moster 185 on the SCOUT for practical use in long cross country flights.
Everything was good to go with the motor. The temperature was about 50F outside so I bundled up for a slight chill in flight to keep it comfortable.
While gearing-up, another of our pilots grabbed my Hadron and laid it out for me. I strapped the SCOUT on my back and preceded towards the wing about 20 meters away. In passing, with the motor started on my back, I asked the other pilot if the wing was “good to go” and I misunderstood his answer over my engine noise as “yes,” which in fact he had said he laid it out, but that’s it. My mistake.
Winds were about 2-6 MPH from the south.
I lifted the risers and examined the A’s to ensure they were clear and pointing forward. They were.
I launched forward with no issues, but at about 50 feet, I noticed my wing was turning right slightly. I grabbed my right brake and pulled it a little bit, but it didn’t move. I looked up and saw my wing tip unsheathed lines wrapped completely around the brake line, right above the toggle. When the wing went up, it carried the toggle through the D and C risers and back down. It was a mess.
My wing continued to gently turn me right and I spiraled shallowly for a while upward to level flight (sort of). I was also trying to untangle the mess on my right brake enough to at least get some control of the glider. I couldn’t do it. I thought about taking out my hook knife and cutting my tip steering line to free everything up. Before this, I grabbed my right D riser and pulled gently. It increased my rate of turn to the right.
I used my left brake gently to test its usability, but due to the counterclockwise turn of the prop and the right wingtip locked-in, I informed the ground crew I had a problem and would update when I could.
Winds 2-6 on the ground were about 5-8 at 50 feet. It pushed me gradually north towards houses.
I had a field below me, so I decided I was landing there. I let the crew know since we’ve only landed outside of our field in bad situations.
I spiraled down gradually, and conducted the spiral to just about flare. I used the left brake toggle and right D riser to flare without further incident.
Lessons Learned:
1. Preflight. Self-explanatory, complacency on my part was the biggest factor here.
2. Practice using only D risers. There’s really nothing to it, but it will take you from a bunch of mediocre solutions to a really good one pretty quickly, especially if you have a good op-test at the time of the incident. It pretty much made up my mind.
3. It’s never too late in the game to learn something new and practice it. Now that I know how the Hadron performs with the D risers, I’ll probably use them more often in-flight at altitude, to adjust course, but also to flare on landing.
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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