High wind landing techniques

There was a recent vigorous discussion of high wind landing techniques in the club that started at our recent barbecue on top launch, continued to our forum at yahoo and was discussed at our 3/8/10 meeting at Fiasco winery.

Here's a summary of techniques:

Jules chimed in with her preferred way to not get lots of dirt spread over her threads:

My personal choice is to hammer all my weight on my c-line quick links upon touching down and ground my canopy as aggressively and quickly as possible byusing a c- line collapse. Also, personally, I don't "flare" on a high wind landing, I would get popped upand maybe drug backwards

Paul added:

Most efficient is as Jules says – kill the wing with the C’s.

The hardest parts of this are

1) to not flare on landing, which will pop you up and expose your wing
2) get your hands on your c’s

It is also counterintuitive to land and keep kiting. So probably worth practicing.

Brad of Discover Paragliding put his thoughts in:

Here's my thoughts, and is what we do out here where landing while going backwards in a fairly normal thing. (Our base rule: "If you can't kite comfortably in these conditions, you can't fly!")

Be very light on the flare. Hands go up immediately upon landing and prepare to kite the glider for a moment. Remember the flare is used to stop vertical and horizontal motion. Two separate components. If you aren't moving forward, you only need just a touch of flare to arrest the vertical component, which usually isn't much.

Grab the rear risers. Forget about the C's, unless they are the rear risers. Too hard to find in an unexpected situation. To grab the rear risers, start near the caribiners and quickly slide your way up to the quick links. This way you don't have to look and you can keep your weight forward on the glider. If you stand upright and look up at the wing, it'll likely be all over, you are going for a drag. (If you have a funky glider with only two or so lines on the D's, you might need to go for the C's and the D's. Practice this before you need it!)

As you begin to pull down the rear risers, you can feel a breaking point that will give you the cue to now rapidly turn around. This can be aided by using the risers to help you get your feet turned around too.

Now, before you wait long enough for the wing to hit the ground, start your rapid run around the glider. If you are quick, you can be 90 degrees off wind before the glider hits the ground. If you wait for the glider to hit the ground, and there are nasties like blackberries or other snags, you will likely have a repair job to do later.

As the glider hits the ground, continue your run to the downwind side of the glider. You can go slack line at this point. If you need to, catch the glider as it blows past you.

This method works great for conditions where you are not likely to get ripped back up into the air by a strong thermal. If the thermals are really ripping, and you want to make sure you stay attached to the ground, one option is to flare with the rear riser hard, but no higher than you would like to fall. 3-4 feet is good. Use the thrust of your hands pulling the rear risers down to push your body through the risers looking down to the ground below. Legs beneath you to catch the short fall. Rotate towards the glider immediately, as above, to prevent being dragged. This method has some risks, and I have only used it a couple of times when the air was a bit of rodeo fun, but the landing was a little scary.

Chris contributes this gem:

A second or two before touch-down, unbuckle from the harness and step out of it as you land, and let go of one of the brake toggles. The glider has no power and there is no risk of being dragged.

I've seen him do this twice, backing in to the park in Ventura, while standing on the speed bar and ballasted to the point he could hardly walk. Took us several minutes to get that first big knot back through the pulley!

John Ivy has this to say:

I was taught the grab C technique back in the late 90's and it was how I instructed most of my students. I totally agree with the idea that if you have to look up to find your C's, it is all over. Most students and perhaps pilots in general could not reach up in time to find there C lines with out looking. I still like my C's for high wing launches, but the technique below really works better than what I was teaching. ( Plus, I also really like Brad's advice that if you can't kite it COMFORTABLY my addition you should not be thinking of flying, especially here where thing ramp up and not down.) The one thing that I would add has to do with being dragged. If you find that you have totally botched it and are being surfed on you back or belly, don't think Cs or Ds, think one wing tip. Pull one wing tip in and keep pulling until the wing line parallel to the wing and you are not being pulled. This has happened to me and be prepared to do the fast roll up that I posted several weeks ago if it is gusty of thermic. Although we cringe at laying on our balled up wing when there is cow junk involved, it is way better that being out of control. We are probably months away from a super thermic LZ, but with lots of P2 I'll bring it up.

Nick throws this out:

Another high wind technique that works well but requires practice is to grab A's just before landing, then induce a frontal just as you touch down. The key is to turn immediately and pull hard on brakes to disable the wing to eliminate the possibility of re-inflation. Again, it takes practice and good timing, but it works. Remember the power of the wind is proportional to the square of the speed, so a 20 mph wind has 16 times the power of a 5 mph wind, that's a lot of power. Also, 20 mph at the beach is less squirrely than 20 mph at a thermic site.

Bruce Comstock likes this approach:

After first practicing this technique while kiting in strong wind I used this several times on my Airwave Sport 2 landing at about 20 miles per hour out in the main valley. Every time I did this on the Sport 2 the center of the wing would drop first and the tips would flip over the center as the center plunged to the ground. Although I always ran towards the wing as soon as my feet touched the ground, this wing never tried to reinflate. It was almost as though it tied itself into a knot in the process.

The other technique I have used is the pulling the C risers just before touchdown technique. I did first practice locating and grasping the top of the C risers, which is a bit of a challenge, especially as one is approaching the ground in this situation. Conceptually, this seems to me more reliable than the A riser technique, though both have worked for me.

I would suggest that either of these techniques should be practiced enough times in strong wind while kiting in order to get the details down well before crunch time in flight.

Jack Brown had this to say:

It's funny that after all these years and a few good draggings I only in the last year or so ran across the high wind landing technique which seems to be the most clean and easy....

It's really quite simple and works like a charm.... When you're getting close and well before ground contact so that your 100% sure what your grabbing, reach up with one hand and grab one A riser only. With the opposite hand just hold onto the brake as normal. Just as your touching down (if your tracking backwards make sure you bend your knees strongly, just yank down the A riser. As soon as the glider assymetrics on that side, start your turn and yank down the opposite brake and then just reel it in from that side.

I've tried all of the various techniques with varying degrees of success but this one is (for me anyway) hands down the best at killing the glider and maintaining your feet, and recovering the glider before it reinflates to try and get your face dirty....

So, that's a bunch of great advice. What I took from all this is get out and practice these techniques at the training hill before you need them. :)