20070705013269A

(-23) Pilot statement 7-11-07: I was able to repair the instruments enough in my glider today to retrive the information from my data logger. I can now be much more accurate in my description of this accident. I took a tow from the glider port at truckee and found strong lift to 17.6 and headed south to join some friends who were well ahead of me. The soaring forecast was for strong lift of 1200 fpm with overdevelopment but isolated thunderstorms. This could be a great soaring day. My rather late start at 3:00 found mostly shade and little lift due to the overdevelopment. An hour later I am at Mt. Patterson near Bridgeport finding all shade and no lift. I headed to the low hills on the east side of the runway at Bridgeport hoping to find some lift near a runway. I found a weak, bumpy thermal that gained about 1000 feet. Upon losing that thermal, I retreated back to the airport in heavy sink and found another weak thermal right over the airport. This was weak and bumpy also and had considerably more drift from about a 15 knot wind from the east. I climbed to 8000 feet and drifted about a mile and a half from the airport. Again I lost the thermal and widened my last 360 degree turn to hope to find it again. A weak thermal in brisk wind will shear off and stop or at least be difficult to relocate. The trace of this thermal showed a sink rate in that last turn back toward the airport of 900 fpm. My glider in still air has about 100 fpm sink rate. Fortunately this serious sink eased to about 600 fpm down. At this rate of sink it looks like I am on base leg for 34 without much altitude to spare. The sink turned into more laminar air about 1/8 mile from the runway and I traded my extra speed for altitude I had already decided to give up on trying to thermal out of here in this trashy air. I can call for the tow plane to come get me or I can call for my trailer and take it apart and drive home. In that last 1/8 mile of relative calm I had a good chance to look over the airport for my landing. I got back over the 34 numbers at 400 feet AGL and had the option of turning final from there and landing long and pushing the glider back 4000 feet on the taxiway or turning what needed to be a 450 degree left turn to get more logical spacing on the runway. My glider will do a 360 degree turn with a loss of less than 100' which would put me about right for a short base to final. The large loss of altitude returning to the airport found me with two choices that were not ideal. I chose the 450 degree turn that ended up being a mistake. According to the trace that samples every 4 seconds, the first 120 degrees of the turn was benign for lift or sink. The rest of the turn until impact was in 600 fpm sink. I impacted a berm that is about 10 feet higher than the runway and about 100 feet short. The wings were level and the speed was about 46 knots just before impact. About 75 feet before impact, I had flown under a set of power and phone lines that were just 12 feet above another berm. The quickly evolving plan was to pull up after the wings passed uder the wires in hopes of lowering the "t" tail on the glider to help pass under the wires and gain the few feet necessary to clear the final berm before the runway. That was the last I remember of the crash. Possible just a few seconds later I awoke inverted and hanging in the harness. I released the harness and was trying to crawl out from under it when the fire dept. Arrived to whisk me away to the hospital. They tied me to the backboard with the neck brace so fast that I didn't get to see the glider and the crash site. I was released from the hospital after the cat-scan with no injuries other than several bruises and abrasions. The next day I returned to the site to find the glider inverted on the second berm about 75 feet past the power lines. The main gear was down and had obviously not touched the grassy berms. The pneumatic tail wheel was flat and dislodged and the tail fairing was missing. There was a 2 foot hole in the ground next to the front of the glider where the nose stuck into the ground. From there it must have slowly tripped over to inverted hardly scratching the stab or hurting the relatively fragile tail boom. I found the tail fairing under the wires on the first berm where it had been knocked off the glider. The main gear cleared but the tail wheel hit and pitched the tail up and the nose down causing the nose to penetrate about 2 feet into the dirt to immediately stop the glider as it slowly rotated onto its top on the second berm. All things considered the crash on the second berm may have been the ideal results for that bad situation. The glider stopped without getting out of control very close to the highway. The sudden impact completely wrinkled the first 8 feet of the carbon-kevlar hybrid nose section without doing any real damage to me. There was also a barbed wire fence just a few feet beyond the second berm bordering the airport property I think. Barbed wire fences have proven fatal to glider pilots in the past. I am thankful to be alive and the lesson learned is this. After flying a little over 50 thousand cross country glider miles in the sierra out of truckee I had never been forced to the ground in heavy sink. About ten minutes before this flight ended with so few options, I was directly over the airport at 1000 feet AGL talking to this citation that was landing 34. I could have been #2 with a whole lot more options from 1000 feet. The turbulence and the crosswind may have still caused me some problems but at least I should be on the runway with room to adjust.