February 21, 2009:

Paragliding accidents

February 12, 2009

Updated February 15, 2009 - Added on February 21, 2009 ( see box below )

February 21, 2009: I have to be away until March 10. Passages of this htm page have been quickly and temporarily removed, following threats of lawsuits made by Mrs. Gensac, instructor of young Luwig ( son of Mrs. Anny Pujeault ), at the Arc en Ciel paragliding school in Bourg Saint Maurice, who died in an accident, on his fourth flight, on August 18, 2008 at 12:30 p.m.

In her formal notice she refers to article 226-1 of the penal code:

http://www.lexinter.net/Legislation2/atteinte_a_la_vie_privee.htm#Article_226-1_

recalling that according to this article *: Is punished with one year of imprisonment and a 45,000 euro fine any person who, by any process whatsoever, voluntarily or involuntarily, infringes the privacy of others, by capturing, recording or transmitting, without the consent of their author, words spoken on a private or confidential basis *.

She was referring in this case to email exchanges with the victim's mother.

We have taken note of this formal notice and have followed up on it. But we do not consider that the practice of the paragliding instructor profession falls within a person's private life.

I will take all this up again on my return. I think the result of all this will be the fairly rapid creation of an association under the 1901 law bringing together the parents and relatives of people who have been killed or injured in ultralight aircraft. All the people who consider that these activities deserve an in-depth investigation, into the regulations that govern them, their supervisory authorities, the exemptions they benefit from, the procedures, the equipment monitoring rules, in short everything concerning these sports, will be able to join this undertaking.

All the people who would like to join this undertaking are asked to contact Mrs. Anny Pujeault

We will take stock of all this on my return.

Personally I lost my best friend, Michel Katzman, who was killed in a two-seater hang glider following the in-flight failure of an undersized part, under a Tecma wing ( see further on ). His passenger and client also died in this accident, which occurred in Méribel.

One of my best friends, Robert Dalmau, and his passenger-client, were left very seriously disabled, following the in-flight failure of the Chronos wing of their Cosmos pendulum ULM.

It so happens that my website has a fairly large audience ( 40,000 readers, 3000 daily connections ). I will put it at the service of this undertaking and it is fortunate that we have such a information organ, the mainstream press preferring to echo feats, rather than open the safety-dangerousness file of certain sports.

*See you soon, then *

From time to time relatives or parents of a person who has been killed in paragliding call on me. It is true that there are not many voices raised to talk about the singular way this sport is managed.

Six months ago it was a mother who told me how her son had died, on one of his very first beginner flights. Then silence. I know only too well the situation of these parents, of these wives or children of deceased people who, crushed by grief, find themselves facing a milieu, which immediately closes ranks against the intruder, who disrupts their little buiseness. The paragliding world has a super lawyer, a fanatical practitioner of this sport, who knows all the legal tricks, and will defend the corporation with all his strength.

The relatives or parents of the victim are then disarmed. Who to turn to? To which lawyer? Who will take charge of this case? The first lawyer who comes along? The cause is then badly started. It would be necessary to be able to entrust the case to a lawyer who had lost his son in this kind of accident, then that one would be on equal footing with the defender of the federation's interests.

There is sport in general, and risky sports. Everything is more or less risky. But these risks can be limited to their strict minimum. I practice gliding. We are equipped with parachutes, which will not be found in a simple touring plane. Why? Because the nuléru risk in a glider, it is the in-flight collision. Gliders are faster than 40 years ago. There are also many more of them. As soon as a glider pilot finds a thermal, he settles into it while spiraling, but others often hasten to join him. Being several in a " pump " is equivalent to finding yourself projected into an episode of swirling combat. There, everything is left to the practitioners' appreciation. But at the time of the initiation to piloting, the word that comes up most often in the mouths of gliding instructors is "safety, for God's sake! ". Indeed, the beginner has too much of a tendency to have his eyes glued to his instruments. The most vicious collision is the one where a pilot forgets to look up, and surreptitiously approaches another glider that is above him, and which, for its part, cannot see him.

We now have a sophisticated anti-collision device, based on GPS called FLARM, which is set to become widespread and already equips most French gliders. The GPS transmits and receives An on-board computer then knows not only where the glider being piloted is, but is able to locate those that are at a given distance. It calculates all that, and in front of oneself, one has a small indicator, linked to an audible warning, which signals, visually:

- Careful, you have a glider close to you, located to your left, lower and behind. The indicator includes small lights that come on and indicate:

*In front
Behind
To the right
To the left
At "2:30 o'clock"
At "4:30 o'clock"
At "7:30 o'clock"
At "10:30 o'clock" *

A relatively sophisticated "FLARM". Ten directions and an indication of altitude and distanceThe red light indicates an aircraft approaching, in the vicinity of the "10:30" direction**

It remains that when you find yourself in a somewhat "populated" thermal you can say to yourself:

*- I fly a glider, fine. But why exactly? To perform, to be the best, to hang on like a madman, to stay in the air as long as possible, even at the cost of gambling with my life and those of others, or to enjoy this sport? What margin of risk am I willing to accept? *

Personally I have practiced many things. My readers know it. Danger arises when you identify with the sport you practice and want to "piss higher than your ass", to fly or climb beyond your means. When you believe yourself capable of facing borderline aerological situations. In aeronautics there is a proverb:

A good pilot is an old pilot

I have always kept it in mind and I hope I will continue to. In gliding, risk is omnipresent. There are collisions. Despite all the rules and safety devices there are several per year, often fatal.

There is not only the risk of collision. You have to stay within an approach cone, which means you always remain able to get back to a field. The very experienced glider pilot will say to himself:

*- Hmmmm.... I am quite low. But the devil take me if I, a sly old fox, don't find something around here to regain altitude, for example over there.... *

But it doesn't always work. Then it's the "oh shit", the "cross-country" landing. It is not automatically beginners who get caught out by it, but sometimes pilots with more than 1000 flight hours. Breaking the glider is the lesser evil, even if these flying "Rolls-Royces" cost more and more. But when it comes to mountain flying, the "cross-country" landing can become very problematic.

Some get caught out by it. This summer an old pilot crashed his glider a few hundred meters from a runway threshold. He was ten meters short of altitude. Glider broken, but the men unharmed, apart from a few bruises. My wife and I will get back to it this summer. Personally, I prefer to be too careful rather than not careful enough. These sports are too beautiful for us to give ourselves pointless scares. That is my opinion.

For the ultralight it is a whole different story. No logbook, no certificate of airworthiness, no mandatory periodic inspections. Only "recommendations".

It is "the libertarian spirit".

You can even fly without a helmet, if that is your choice. I drew a comic book on the mechanics of flight and took the opportunity to include a passage explaining the danger inherent in paragliding. At least people will know about it and it will be translated into 30 languages on the site http://www.savoir-sans-frontieres.com .

How many times have I heard people with an impressive number of flight hours tell me:

*- I don't know what happened to me. Suddenly my wing shot forward and passed under me. It's a miracle that I didn't fall into it. *

Testimony from an experienced pilot, dated January 9, 2009

Hello,

I confirm what you say.

If a pilot is surprised by the stall of the wing after slowing it down too much and has the reflex to raise his hands abruptly, the wing, regaining speed too abruptly, will "shoot" forward until it dives far below the pilot. An extremely dangerous phase in which the pilot can fall back into his wing as was the case of the young man mentioned in your article on the site. It is a piloting or over-piloting error that I experienced unintentionally and that taught me this.

I confirm this rather frightening sensation of being pulled forward by the wing which takes off at an incredible speed to dive far ahead of the pilot. I was just lucky not to fall back into the wing, I fell back between the lines with my helmet torn off by my head passing between the lines. This is probably due to this f component that you describe and which is suddenly increased when at the same time lift and aerodynamic force collapse at the moment of the stall and which is the only one active in the phase of the wing regaining speed in case the pilot "raises" his hands abruptly.

Best regards.

Gilbert G.

PS: this subject interests me greatly, having unintentionally stalled my paraglider with the consequences described above and also because I dislocated my shoulder last summer on an asymmetric stall one meter off the ground in a gust of wind.

One of them, a true miracle survivor, had even passed through the lines!! Here is a video extract showing a fatal paragliding accident where the wing suddenly turns into a shroud. . What happened? See my comic book MECAVOL, downloadable free of charge at http://www.savoir-sans-frontieres.com/JPP/telechargeables/Francais/mecavol/mecavol_francais.htm. It is on pages 36 to 43 (extracts reproduced further on).

By the way, our little association, after two years of activity, thanks to donations from my readers (50,000 euros), now puts online more than 300 albums, in 30 languages, but no media, no press, written or spoken, has ever mentioned the existence of our association, which lives only on donations from its readers. The JP.Petit omertà, in the press, is in full swing. It's ugly, but that's how it is. Let's move on....

Let's get back to this type of paragliding accident. When it comes to flying machines there is what is called the stall. This is more or less brutal and depends on the flying machine used. It is all the more sharp, brutal, when the wing profile is flat, works on an " all or nothing " basis. It's logical. I flew at the end of the fifties on a C-25-S.

The C 25 S filmed in the movie " La Grande Vadrouille

An ancestor, compared to current machines. The significant relative thickness of the wing is clearly visible in the photos

This glider, you've all seen it. It's the one on which the heroes of La Grande Vadrouille take off, at the end of the film. It's a good old school glider, two-seater, not very high-performance, which hasn't been used for a long time, with a profile so thick that it doesn't... stall! Or rather: the transition from normal flight to stalled mode takes place without a spectacular dive. The C-25-S sank gently into a parachutal descent. That doesn't mean you had to stay like that. In a glider and in a plane, when you stall you have to " give back the hand ", push on the stick, pitch down to quickly regain speed. And you mustn't wait.

With structures devoid of framework like paragliders, extensions of the " ram-air canopies " which, in skydiving, replaced the good old " grandpa " hemispherical ones, the behavior is totally different.

Since I was thirteen and had the chance to pilot a... DC-3 ( see my biography ) I've flown on just about anything. Fifteen years ago I wanted to get back into skydiving, which I had practiced around 1960. I had done freefall and had 200 jumps. Here is my " second degree " license, that is to say " freefall ", completed in the army (where I was, among other things, head of the military gliding section of Fribourg, in Germany. The students of Supaéro joined the army as second lieutenants, not as " EOR ", reserve officer cadets ).

At over sixty years old I took it up again, without a problem.

In my sixties

Since my beginnings in this kind of sport parachutes had evolved a lot. In the past, in " commanded ", the ripcord handle was sewn onto a strap, at the height of the left breast. Now that's where the handle triggering the release of the main parachute and the opening of the reserve parachute, which is located below the main parachute, at the bottom of the bag, is housed. The opening control system is a kind of plastic thing having the shape and size of a cork, which you have on your right thigh. The gesture is moreover complex. You have to bring your right hand back onto your thigh, while putting your left hand in front of your head, to avoid an untimely roll movement. Without this second gesture you would roll over on your side.

The pilot was afraid. The jumpmaster was afraid. The other skydivers were afraid, in the small Cessna plane, piloted by a German friend, a former Starfighter pilot. They were saying to themselves " at his age, he's going to confuse everything. Moreover he's a researcher, a mathematician, always in the clouds, lost in his calculations ". I told them:

*- Don't worry. On the left, the reserve, on the strap, on the right the opening of the main parachute, on the thigh. Everything is going to be fine. *

But I felt that they were only half reassured. That being said, there was no problem. I'm absent-minded, but for secondary things. Otherwise I would never have survived decades of lead climbing, diving, hang gliding. It's not because you can leave a building in pajamas that you'll forget to hook onto a wing before taking off.

It was the same with the glider, which I took up again this summer after 40 years of stopping. But I had still done other things in the meantime, including 25 years of hang gliding. On the morning of my solo release, Philippe, my instructor had said to Jie, my wife:

- Did Jean-Pierre sleep well? - Yes, why? - Because I, not at all! ....

Bah, everything went very well, as usual. Gliding is like riding a bike.....

Let's get back to skydiving, which I had taken up again a few years ago ( now, with the state of my spine, it would be a problem, that's for sure. Fortunately, gliding is an aerial sport for bedridden or semi-bedridden people. We even have a machine equipped with a " malonnier " for paraplegics ).

I must testify to the fact that when I did this delayed-opening skydiving refresher, no one had warned me about how a ram-air canopy stalls. With those you open at 600 meters, as opposed to 300 with the hemispherical ones of old. Increased safety. There is also a barometric (altimetric) system that automatically triggers the opening in case the parachutist feels unwell. A technically complex, costly gadget, but one that bears witness to the attention paid to safety. Great care is also taken with packing. With the hemispherical ones, this operation was much simpler. Here, there are two levels of competence. A beginner prepares his pack job and an approved member, a "checker", comes to check that everything has been done correctly before giving his go-ahead for the final bagging of the canopy. A well-packed parachute poses no problem on opening, if the parachutist is in a good position. Moreover the parachutes have a logbook. The number of jumps is recorded there and the parachute is retired, destroyed after so many jumps.

In ultralight this procedure does not exist, or in any case is not mandatory. When a practitioner judges that his canopy is becoming unreliable in his eyes, he .. resells ....

In short, my first jump with a "modern" ram-air canopy goes very well. The opening of a ram-air parachute is delayed by a "slider":

The operation of the slider of ram-air parachutes, to reduce the shock on opening

Ram-air parachute, open. You can see the small pilot chute and the slider which has positioned itself as in the image on the right, above.

I find myself, parachute open, at 600 meters altitude. It is steered like a bike with two brakes that lower the trailing edge of the right or left parts of the canopy. You brake on the right. The right part slows down, the left part, going a shade faster, rises and the tilt causes the rotation, which then maintains itself by the effect of "induced roll".

Turning in a paraglider

But if you pull on both brakes at the same time, you slow the machine down, and below a certain speed it's the stall. That is what you do in the immediate vicinity of the ground. You pull everything. It kills the speed, already not huge in stabilized flight, and the canopy stalls. With practice you manage to land at a trot, or even at zero speed, feet together. Every good pilot must test the stall behavior on any machine, at a respectable distance from the ground. At 600 meters altitude I therefore pull on these brakes, progressively. The wing stalls, and then something happens that I do not analyze at the moment. The wing shoots violently forward and I find it on the horizon, in front of me. I admit to being unpleasantly surprised, not understanding, because I initiated this stall very gently.

The stall on a ram-air parachute ( all parachutes, today )

Obviously: reflex: I let go of everything. I have the reflex to remove the cause of this phenomenon, to release the brakes. In an airplane or glider, same idea. The stall comes from having pulled too much on the stick, so " you give back control ". But in fact what happens with the paraglider is totally different in essence. I reproduce here the pages that I included in Mécavol.

The way the paraglider pilot tears his wing off the ground at the moment of takeoff is there to prove to you that a wing struck by the airflow at a very high angle undergoes an aerodynamic force that propels it forward. Here a photo of the unfortunate Ludwig, son of Anny Pugeault, taken during his last flight at Bourg Saint Maurice ( details further on ).

Ludwig is about to take off for his third and last flight. You can see that the canopy is struck by the wind at an angle of 90°. That is what will make it rise sharply.

Indeed, if you have been to a takeoff site you will have seen the paraglider pilots lay their canopy flat, facing the wind. From their first steps it comes above them, exactly as the kite of your childhood did.

As soon as the canopy leaves the ground, Ludwig begins his run. The angle of attack of the wing reaches 30-35° there. When its angle of attack ( the wing of the canopy plane relative to the relative wind, to the airflow will become equal, let us say, to about a dozen degrees the lift force will become vertical, balancing the weight and stopping this forward projection of the canopy.

The accident had no impact on the activities of the school or on those of this instructor. There was no investigation by the Ministry of Youth and Sports or by any supervisory body, since these activities fall under none.

During email exchanges with the victim's mother ,Mrs. Anny Pujeault

The instructor has always maintained that her conduct of Ludwig's flight had been perfectly in accordance with the rules and denies having committed the slightest fault. Conversely she strongly called into question the psychology of the victim.

Let's return to the take-off technique. All that remains is to run while accompanying the sail in its natural acceleration. In a normal take-off this wing becomes load-bearing. The paraglider's feet leave the ground and he then controls his launch by piloting with his "brakes," not with his feet. You will see this mentioned further on in a failed take-off that caused the death of Mrs. Patricia Roubaud's husband.

The break in the slope will help Ludwig to leave the ground, for his last flight, under a wing not suited to his status as a beginner. The headwind is apparently weak and the take-off laborious, despite a sufficient slope.

Page 40, you have the example of an accident that I saw unfold before my eyes, near Aix en Provence. A young beginner had made too long a landing approach. He was overshooting the field where we were supposed to land and was going to land in simple bushes, at the edge. He wanted to shorten his approach, and to that end pulled on his brakes. He stalled six to eight meters from the ground. As a result his wing shot forward and his body began that pendulum motion, described above, which would have been without consequences if it had happened at a higher altitude. Alas his legs struck the ground. Result: both ankles broken. It would have been better to land in the bushes, even at the cost of tearing a little nylon.

Six months ago Mrs. Anny Pugeault had written to me. Her son Ludwig (above) had died during a course for beginners. Aged thirty-two, he already had substantial experience in free fall. He died on his fourth flight, which was conducted by radio by his instructor, Mrs. Gensac. This beginner's flight took place in the middle of August in the middle of summer and at the hottest hour, the most conducive to the establishment of turbulence (August 18, 2008, 12:30 p.m.!). First mistake. A beginner is systematically made to fly early in the morning; when the air is calmest, to minimize the risks. I have had numerous email exchanges with experienced paraglider pilots claiming that this boy had been entrusted with a wing of a type not appropriate to his status as a beginner. Debatable.

Finally the instructor had asked him by radio to make actions on the brakes, in the air. He went into a pendulum motion. His wing passed under him, he fell into it and was killed.

When an accident of this kind occurs the investigation is entrusted to the air gendarmes. They hasten to clear the instructor, and the club.

Free fall: This sport is very tightly supervised, and a student who took liberties with his life would quickly be sent back to automatic jumps, or even banned from jumping, if he amused himself for example by making low openings, below the regulatory 600 meters. This kind of eccentricity was fashionable in the sixties, when I was starting free fall, a movement that was very quickly stopped by six-month jump bans. The particularity of skydiving is that it is impossible to jump from a private plane. (except now in "cliff jumping," not covered by the skydiving federation).

In a normal situation you go through an approved club, governed by solid regulations and procedures, or you don't jump. Nor could you jump with a parachute devoid of a jump logbook. Whereas anyone can practice ultralight flying, starting with paragliding, anywhere, at their own risk, under a wing bought second-hand from... anyone, in any condition. No logbook attests to the condition a paraglider or hang glider is in at the time of its resale. Paradox: you cannot sell a car without being in order with respect to the mandatory technical inspection. The registration document attests to the age of the vehicle and its odometer to its mileage. If you are stopped by a gendarme and you are not in order, it is an offense, immediately penalized. But no gendarme will come and demand from you, when you land, your "aircraft logbook," its technical inspection sheet, your pilot's license. And he won't even be able to fine you if you fly without a helmet, since he cannot rely on any regulation that makes it mandatory, at least to my knowledge. In ultralight flying these technical inspections are not prescribed by any duly officialized regulation, falling within the framework of a regulation where non-compliance is liable to penalties (the only guarantee that this measure is respected). There are only "recommendations." I point out to you in passing that the registration numbers that you will be able to see on ULMs, for example, do not correspond in any case to a certificate of airworthiness in due form, but to a simple tax and to a marking allowing their identification, in case of nuisance for the neighborhood.

The problem of paragliding is the general problem of ultralight flying. The association will conduct its investigation into the possible exemptions benefiting these activities. Are they supervised? By whom? How?

If there are weak points in terms of student safety, practitioners, equipment, we will report them. Since there is no such thing as a zero-risk activity, the public must be warned of the risks they run by practicing ultralight flying.

Let's come back to this paraglider stall business. We saw the accident of that boy who tried to shorten his landing approach. Immediate sanction: both ankles broken. But a stall can also occur during a turbulent gust, when crossing a strongly ascending zone. Then the angle of attack, the angle of the airflow relative to the wing surface, is increased and this can go as far as what is called a dynamic stall. I know that I am the real bête noire in this milieu. I have received an avalanche of insulting letters, which I couldn't care less about. Each time I offer the author to reproduce his email, with his name, and it's a pathetic cop-out. Insult, yes, sign, no.

Whatever the cause of this stall, the danger is risking falling into your canopy. Now what does a beginner, or an uninformed practitioner, tend to do? He lets go of everything. But that's what you must not do. When the canopy surges forward, you must on the contrary brake it, to prevent it from going further, but how many know that? It must be admitted that it's not at all obvious. Had the instructor warned her student of this risk and of the behavior to adopt? She will claim she did. I'll go even further. How many flights did this boy have under his belt? Stalling being an eminently dangerous situation in paragliding, one would like to know how and when beginners are encouraged to try this maneuver. I personally initiated several students into hang-glider flight, in the seventies; but, but it was a time when hang-glider instruction did not exist. There were no radio links either. Right away, we released our student-friends:

*- Early in the morning

• With a helmet and good shoes.
• On wings that are easy to pilot, in good flying condition.
• From a takeoff field without problems.
• In optimal aerological conditions: wind well head-on, well lifting but moderate.
• Vast field for landing. Ground wind well oriented.
• For a large number of first flights: Take off, move away from the relief as quickly as possible. Shallow turns. Ensure a good landing approach, head-on wind, and that's all.
• The stall, the tighter turns, we'll see later.... *

The stall test came much later, on the tenth "big flight," and in a well horizontal flight, always early in the morning, in calm weather, hundreds of meters from the ground or from any relief. In the hang gliders of yesteryear this maneuver was without danger.

None of the friends to whom I taught to fly ever even sprained an ankle or turned back a fingernail.

The many letters I have received have shown me that many pilots, having nevertheless a large number of paraglider flights to their credit, in all aerological conditions, who one day saw their canopy shoot through their legs, generally did not understand what had happened to them. Which means that the pages I added to my Mécavol comic strip will enlighten more than one, throughout the world, and will perhaps save a few lives along the way. I have lost count of the number of pilots who have told me:

*- I've been flying for years. I have a good number of flights to my credit, and I knew nothing about all this. *

I should specify that this comic strip is downloadable free of charge and that if schools wish to take these pages to include them in their courses, they should certainly not deny themselves.

*By the way, go and see in the official manuals what is said about stalling in paragliding. I would be curious to know *

I even added page 41, because it illustrates something that readers can easily understand. The flatter a wing is, the more sharply it stalls. Because when the airflow separates from the profile, it is then over almost the entire profile that this happens. The residual lift then collapses: that which is due to the few airflows still attached to the front part of the wing becomes negligible. I told you earlier about the C-25-S, the glider from La Grande Vadrouille, which passed gently from normal flight to parachutal descent. Last year I took up gliding again, after a forty-year break (in between there were 25 years of hang gliding). So I started everything from scratch. When you land, the flight ends with a stall. Every landing of a plane or glider ends with a stall performed right at ground level.

With the gliders of forty years ago, like the C-800 two-seaters or the single-seat Javelot, landing finals were always carried out gently. You really had to fly like a klutz to "slam" it. Now it's different. Modern gliders have flatter wings, which goes hand in hand with a higher flight speed and a higher glide ratio, all of this being in the direction of a search for performance. If you stall, even just one meter from the ground, it goes "boom!" and it wears out the machine.

The trend is the same in ultralight flying. Paraglider wings have been flattened to make them more penetrating, faster. This race for performance has even been able to make modern hang gliders dangerous to land. Personally I flew a "Nuage," less performant, but without problems on landing. These aircraft are devoid of airbrakes, of lift dumpers (as are gliders, where panels emerging from the wings ensure these two functions). So there are a number of fatal hang-glider accidents, essentially on landing, when the pilot tries to turn too sharply, too close to the ground, and stalls.

I'm making this page today because spring and summer will soon be here. I hope that practitioners or parents will read these lines, will see these pages. I say it, I repeat it, a sport like paragliding is not governed by strict and well-defined regulations. The ease of learning is deceptive, fatally deceptive. I will now address the case of a fatal accident where a father of a family killed himself before the eyes of his loved ones. We have a few photos of him, taken at take-off. It was an introductory tandem flight, with an instructor. He and his passenger are of comparable size, but the passenger is heavier, by 15 kilos. At a rough guess, the terrain is not suited to a take-off. The witnesses say that the headwind was too weak. In a possible trial, I would request that a precise topographical survey of this take-off slope be produced. When you take off in paragliding you cannot run, accelerate. In hang gliding, yes. I have taken off in a hang glider with a very weak headwind, pushing hard with the legs. The tubular structure of the machine allows it. None of that in paragliding.

The Roubaud family therefore decides to be initiated into the joys of tandem paragliding flight, during the summer of 2008. Here is the position of the pilot and his passenger ( here, me ) in a tandem paraglider ( above Lake Annecy ). Good take-off strip ( at the Forclaz pass ), with a good headwind. Immediate lift-off. Good aerological conditions, equipment in good condition, competent instructor.

The instructor handled the take-off and the landing. The rest of the time, I piloted. On the right, the control line of his camera

This view allows you to see the detail of the harness which is supposed to prevent the passenger from tipping forward

February 15, 2009: You will also notice that the type of harness used allows the load to be distributed. The attachment point of the wing is located directly below the pilot + passenger center of gravity. On the " tandem " wing with which the second accident occurred, this system is absent. Was this " tandem " paraglider " compliant " and ... compliant with what. What is the regulation regarding tandem flights. Reactions from professionals and experienced pilots are pouring in. One says that it seems the pilot, during accident no. 2, had the flight control around his wrist and not in his hand. The original photo would need to be enlarged. In any case he lost his head and stopped piloting his machine.

*Customers for a paragliding flight: before entrusting your life to an " instructor " ( approved ? ) ask him for his accreditations and take a look at his equipment, assess its age, its degree of wear. *

Regarding tandem flight, a few clarifications. At take-off, with a tandem hang glider, the pilot holds the control bar, his passenger holds him by the waist. They run side by side. The passenger is attached a little shorter than the pilot, so that his legs leave the ground first, which allows the pilot to control the end of the run. Both are hung like hams by a strap, to the keel of the machine. As piloting is done by shifting weight ( forward to dive, backward to pitch up, right and left for turns ), the passenger is asked to become one with the pilot. In the air the pilot grips his passenger's legs with his own, when both move into the prone position toward the front. Reverse maneuver on landing where the pilot releases the passenger's legs and the latter returns to his side-by-side position. I made numerous tandem flights with my friend Michel Katzman, (archive of 06/04/2013) pioneer of free flight ( my first flights, I made them solo in 1974, on "Manta".

Michel Katzman in flight, seventies, died in 1989

At that time tandem machines did not exist, in 1974. Katzman had started one or two years before me ). Michel killed himself, along with his passenger, at Méribel in 1999, on a TECMA wing, designed by Mr. Mallinjoud, following an undersizing of a " hole plate ", which broke from fatigue. It was too thin. With half a millimeter more, it would never have happened. An unavoidable accident, the only one of its kind known, to my knowledge.

The stainless steel hole plate, ensuring the junction between the lower cable, subjected to variable tensions depending on whether the wing is in horizontal flight or in a turn , subjected to a " load factor ". The failure of this part costing a few euros, undersized, cost the lives of two men.

*But in ultralight, where no calculation or preliminary fatigue test was ever carried out, the " progress " of the machines was made through fatal accidents. *

Let us move on to the way the pilot and his passenger are arranged during a tandem flight, with a hang glider and with a paraglider.

Tandem hang glider take-off, the pilot and his passenger run side by side

Hang glider take-off, end of run. The passenger's legs, attached shorter, leave the ground first The pilot holds the control bar. The passenger presses against him holding him by the waist

Two-seater hang glider, in flight. The pilot holds his passenger's legs with his own to better move as one with him. The passenger holds him by the waist and does not touch the control bar

Totally different situation in paragliding, where the pilot is at the rear and his passenger at the front, both sitting on "harnesses", in tandem.

Diagram of the take-off of a two-seater paraglider: from the very first steps, or even as soon as it rises, the wing has enough lift to carry the passenger. The pilot controls the run and both his hands are busy steering

This position hardly allows two people to run without "getting tangled up". When conditions are right, as soon as the canopy has passed above the two of them and has become load-bearing, the lift must be sufficient to take off half the load, that is to say the passenger. The pilot judges that take-off is then possible and controls the acceleration. Otherwise, if he pulls fully on the brakes he tips the wing backwards, which acts as a brake and collapses.

Let us move on to the accident that cost Mr. Roubaud his life. In the images that follow, his legs are passed under those of the instructor-pilot, who completely loses contact with the ground (the latter has his legs apart). Apparently, the slope is gentle and the wind is not lifting (confirmed by the witnesses). The pilot had moreover hesitated to make the decision to do this third flight, after having taken up Mr. Roubaud's wife and son-in-law without any problem. It was Mrs. Patricia Roubaud who sent me these shots, asking me to circulate them.

The take-off is going very badly. The instructor-pilot thinks about holding back his passenger and has thus stopped steering his machine

February 15, 2009: According to an experienced pilot, the pilot (his name, please!) has his right control passed around his wrist and not his hand. To be checked by enlarging the original photo. If that is the case it is a serious mistake. in any case, this fellow is no longer steering and has completely lost his head. Lastly, compare the attachment system of this paraglider's canopy with that of the model on which I flew, in Annecy, which has a yoke that distributes the weight and places the traction at the pilot-passenger center of gravity. An examination of the harness above is essential. Before asking the question " was this pilot certified? Was this harness compliant, take a look at the passage of the email received this morning:

This shot would need to be placed in context on the ground, which would be easy. In my opinion the pilot ( whose name we would like to give here ) would have had every opportunity to abort the takeoff maneuver, by pulling hard on both brakes. The canopy would have gone backwards and would have acted as a brake. The image evokes that of a plane pilot who, seeing his passenger slip from his seat, lets go of his control stick to help him. A gendarme claimed that he was pulling on the left brake. Not very credible, because that would have immediately caused a left turn.

The pilot, legs apart, has lost contact with the ground. One can see the brake handle that seems wrapped around his wrist. He is no longer piloting, but holding back his passenger.

Here again, it seems to me ( the production of these shots is both a call for witnesses and for expert opinions, these messages to be sent to the victim's widow:

that aborting the takeoff should have imposed itself immediately.

A spectator masks part of the scene. The pilot, hindered by his passenger's legs, still has his legs apart. He no longer seems to control anything.

Comments from witnesses welcome

These images suggest that the takeoff terrain has a break in slope, but after a rise, in the form of a rocky barrier.

The passenger has gone completely behind the harness ( ??? ). His head violently strikes the rocky barrier. To be clarified

Apparently the pilot's right arm is raised. what it means is that he thus lets go of the brake ( I imagine : the brakes) while seeking to take off at all costs. It is this shot that poses a problem and that calls for a comment.How can the passenger end up in such a position !?!? Had he been attached correctly before takeoff? The part of the harness that passes in front of his chest and over his two shoulders in principle prevents his body from tipping over like this under the pilot's seat and from being able to end up behind, head down. Was this harness placed under seal, examined? Answer to be provided to the Roubaud family.

The passenger arrived deceased, "his face all congested." I will reproduce the testimonies and comments from specialists and experts that people will kindly forward to me.

One may wonder whether the pilot will not invoke "some untimely maneuver emanating from the passenger," in the initial phase of takeoff (and even if that were the case, it is an imperative cause for interrupting the takeoff maneuver, since the distance remaining ahead of the wing allows it). I have made numerous flights in two-seater paragliding. It seems difficult, unlike the two-seater hang glider, to operate a two-person run, given the tandem position of the pilot and passenger. How can one lengthen one's stride without getting one's feet caught in the other's legs? It seems to me that the only logical procedure, concerning a two-seater takeoff, is that the lift provided by the wing, under the effect of the headwind alone, should suffice to ensure the lifting of the passenger, which would then allow the pilot, alone in contact with the ground, to control alone the forward run before takeoff. The question should therefore be put to two-seater pilots, and beyond that to the writers of manuals, to those who lay down procedures and regulations, who issue the authorizations to carry passengers:

*- Do you plan to launch into a two-person run, in a two-seater, when the passenger's legs are still in contact with the ground? And if the latter's legs are in contact with the takeoff strip and this risks creating an incident, do you not decide to pull the brakes fully and cancel this takeoff? *

Yet it seems that the pilot, in the case of this accident, had totally ceased to control this takeoff, not only by ceasing to pilot manually (his hands are occupied holding his passenger's shoulders) but by spreading his legs, that is to say by losing all control of a run that he should have been the only one able to control?

Off the top of my head, and without guarantee:

- A takeoff site with a gentle slope, requiring a well-established headwind, with a flat area ending in a rocky barrier. . - Headwind too weak, insufficiently lifting (witnesses) - Maintenance of the takeoff decision, made by a pilot who weighs 15 kilos less than his passenger - The paraglider does not take off, in the strict sense of the term, after a run of tens of meters.**- The pilot spreads his legs, loses control of the takeoff run whereas from the very start of it he should have been the only one in contact with the ground. - The decision to brake fully should have been taken instantly. There was still enough room to pin the machine to the ground, before the break in slope. - A pilot who loses his head, stops piloting, spreads his legs, does anything - A harness problem, incomprehensible, to be elucidated (the purpose of producing these photos)

accident_parapente_1/ludwig3.gif

Epilogue

Once again, we find ourselves confronted with the problem of ultralights, against a backdrop of risky sport, even extreme sports. In the field of freediving, the death of our national champion Loïc Leferme, record holder for depth in this idiotic activity called "extreme freediving" (which nevertheless has its own federation!) seems to have slowed the enthusiasm for this kind of activity, hyper dangerous.

In the field of flying machines, we observe the following. *If, paradoxically, it is rigorously impossible to venture onto a road with a "rolling machine" that has not received approval from the mines service, anyone can invent, manufacture and sell a flying machine of their own making without the slightest control and make it take the roads of the sky. *

April 7, 2009: One who had a narrow escape

The show must go on

I received a letter from an ultralight practitioner, who criticized my partiality about these activities, attributed it to the tragedy I had experienced and called for a more attentive reading of the texts, with clarification. One quickly falls back on the peculiarity of this sport: the fact of entrusting to the users the care of ensuring themselves the maintenance of their machine and of seeing to its good working order, of deciding themselves when their machine must be retired, destroyed. Still they must have the competence for it. No logbook, no traceability of the machine's history. I have an old friend who is ending his life, an invalid, after having crashed on takeoff with his passenger (as damaged as he) under a French weight-shift ultralight of a big brand, bought second-hand after having been used for 200 hours. A machine "like new". Rupture of the attachment part of a lower cable at the level of the cross leading-edge junction. Unavoidable.

I have another friend who is six feet under, following another in-flight rupture of a part, from fatigue. The list is long ....

I see one thing: Ludwig's mother and this man's wife, whom one sees killing themselves on the photos* have not come forward again*. I had suggested to them to form an association under the 1901 law, oriented toward the defense of parents and relatives of victims of accidents of this kind. My friend Robert Dalmau has not sent me, after years, the drawings of the junction part which, by breaking, made him gravely an invalid, robs him of sleep every night, and that after multiple requests and promises to follow up. These drawings are... in the hands of his lawyer and it would have been enough for him to have them sent to me so that I could show, on the basis of a document having been produced in the trial, with what aberrations technically people are made to fly. But I know too well what happened, and that I experienced. Once the time of struggle has passed, rather brief, people feel crushed by grief, or suffering, the misery of their disability, and are no longer capable of doing anything. That is what allows manufacturers to keep manufacturing and selling anything, owners to get rid of dangerous machines by reselling them to the first comer and schools to teach ... anyhow. Go see on the email above the little information that this user was able to find on paragliding stall.

This correspondent who was protesting, wrote to me speaking of manufacturers, of schools " if these people did this ... that, the victims would turn immediately against them .....". Big joke. There are victims who are no longer in a state to turn against anyone. As for the parents and relatives, they should, to do so, be able to tear themselves away from the pain that crushes them, by embarking on an exhausting and problematic struggle. To this correspondent, whom I will not name, and who speaks with such warmth in favor of this libertarian spirit that animates his favorite sport, I feel like writing " I would like you to lose a son and we would then see what energy you could invest to turn against this and that...". I think of Prévert's phrase, paraphrasing it:

*Those who manufacture in their coffins the pens with which others will write that all is for the best *

Read the file that I had started to put together in 2001.

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