Michel, my brother
Oh Michel, my brother
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**In memory of my friend Michel Katzman, who died in a paraglider accident in 1989.
**
Michel introduced me to paragliding in Chamonix in 1974. After seeing the feats of a guy who had taken off from the Champs Elysées, I went to make my first solo flight in a Dannis glider in Chamonix, where the son of the guide Lachenal was training clients by putting them on the machine, with takeoff and landing on skis. I was really hooked, so I bought a "Danis" glider, a Rogallo wing with a fixed crossbar, 90-degree dihedral and a descent rate of 2.5 m/s. It was hardly different from an iron. All winter I took off on snow, in ski resorts. Then, when the snow was gone, I didn't know what to do. I then equipped old stroller wheels on skis. Then I went back to Chamonix and that's where I met Katzman, who was laughing out loud when he saw my setup. And I said:
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But, how do you take off?
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By running! I'll show you.
I quickly got used to this practice and made my first "big flight" in Cluses, then in Annecy. For years I lived this "flying bohemian" life with Michel and Odile.
As a geology student, Michel earned his living in the winter by taking clients to Méribel on the first tandem gliders. Then, with his girlfriend Odile Monrozier, they traveled all over France and Switzerland. I followed them with my 2CV and my glider. One year, I even joined them in California. Unfortunately, Michel didn't believe in the effectiveness of the parachute. He died in Méribel, due to a failure of a "holey leg" from fatigue. A cheap part that connects the lateral cables to the leading edge tubes. Too thin. It was the only case of such a failure in the history of paragliding. With a half millimeter more thickness, it would never have happened. He and his client fell on the roof of a hotel. A witness heard Michel shout to his client, "Close your eyes, we're done for!" After that, I tried to add more safety to this paragliding method. One of my Supaéro colleagues, Laroze, had become the head of the structure department at the school, which had moved to Toulouse. He had suffered a paragliding accident and was therefore motivated by safety issues. So we had a meeting in Toulouse with a guy who represented the paragliding federation. The goal was not to restrict this sport, but to help manufacturers avoid mistakes due to ignorance, especially regarding material fatigue (the cause of Michel's death).
The DGAC (General Directorate of Civil Aviation) had refused to take this aerial sport under its responsibility, and had multiplied "exemptions". As a result, fatal accidents followed one after another. Some people said, "When there have been enough deaths, they will stop practicing this stupid sport." The incompetent air police made sloppy accident reports, which always ended with the conclusion: "Accident, cause undetermined." I was an eyewitness to such behavior during a fatal accident in Laragne, which resulted in the death of the pilot and his passenger, leaving a little girl orphaned, waiting for her mother at the "Otto Lilienthal Center" (which was run by a certain Manucci, a center that has since disappeared). This accident could have been avoided if the motorized delta in question had been better designed. The sail, worn out and damaged by UV rays, had torn in flight. The trailing edge was not reinforced, just a simple hem. If there had been a nylon braid underneath, the low-quality sail would have torn but the glider would have remained controllable. The pilot deployed his pyrotechnic parachute. But the shock absorber, based on an elastic (rubber ages and breaks), had snapped. The rocket continued its flight without deploying the parachute from its sheath. After the air police, who had only taken photos of the two bodies, I found the rocket and reconstructed the circumstances of the tragedy. At that point, the DGAC representative arrived, disturbed by my presence.
In Toulouse, the representative of the paragliding federation understood that Laroze and I were only interested in fighting against this avalanche of fatal accidents. Thus, the manufacturers declared themselves ready to provide the equipment to us. Laroze, at the school, would use all the school's facilities (state-of-the-art, expensive) to test the strength of the setups, including fatigue, a concept that was very poorly understood by the manufacturers (in fact, not understood at all!). As practical work, the students would test the equipment. At the center of this setup, it would be necessary to find a doctoral student, preferably from Supaero or ENICA, and practicing paragliding. He would write his thesis on all aspects of paragliding. Two thesis supervisors: Laroze for the structural aspects, who would also provide the "KATIA" software, and me for aerodynamics and flight mechanics. After this two-year thesis, the guy would have a job somewhere and visit manufacturers and centers to give advice, detecting defects before they resulted in fatal accidents (which had been the way paragliding had "progressed" so far: on corpses). We even planned to design manufacturing and testing standards as well as calculation programs, running on the free PCs that the manufacturers could have used. The federation was even ready to put their hand in their pocket to contribute to this "thesis scholarship".
Before going to Toulouse, I had contact with a guy I had studied with at Supaero, Daniel Tennebaum, a military engineer who had "pantouflé" as director of the DGAC. After returning from Toulouse, I tried to contact him by writing, "It's done, I have a solution to stop the massacre. The only thing left is to find the money for this scholarship."
He then ... went silent. So much so that I ended up writing, "Daniel, how many young people will have to die before you react?" The explanation: my solution was too simple, too cheap, and above all "outside the system". This system consisted first of all of placing friends with good salaries, well-fed, an administration, a hierarchy, preferably composed of polytechnicians, like himself. As for the rest, I thought back to what the DGAC investigator in Laragne had told me: "When these people get tired of dying, they will stop." My old school friend had become "a politician", from the world of industry and aeronautics.
I don't know how this sport has evolved now. I know that fatal accidents have continued, in paragliding, in hang gliding, and in motorized wings. Has it improved today? I hope so ...
Arpeggiated Chord ****
| Refrain | : | Oh Michel, my brother | lam
rém | Talk to me, talk to me, say | mi7 lam | Oh Michel, my brother | lam
rém
Michel, my friend
si7° mi7
He walks under the clouds lam When the sun is at noon rém And that's how he travels mi7 With his funny umbrella lam He greets the buzzards as he passes lam And the birds are his friends rém Below, the fields and meadows mi7 Will soon serve as his bed lam And when suddenly the wind carries him He flies like a straw He goes so high in the sky That many times he has been lost But like a brave captain He guides his silk ship He climbs the mountains The lakes, the meadows and the woods
The sun beats down on the plain And I am alone on my rock With my memories and my sorrow Without you, I will fly away I will look for you in the clouds My brother whom I loved so much Goodbye, our beautiful adventures Beyond the mountains and meadows Is that where you are now, among the stars, Having left us? May your ship unfurl its sails Across the Milky Way At night I scan the dark sky Days pass, years go by Hoping to see you, Like a beautiful eagle shining