I was hoping that this little *incident* would take a back seat for a while but it seems that this one little insignificant, microscopically small and unimportant event has already been making its way around the country (by the number of phone calls that I received on the way back home from the Extravaganza yesterday).
I was the pilot of the machine in question. Yes, I lost a little over 1/3rd of the left side of my Thunderbolt 340 elliptical chute while coming out of a hard spiral. No, I'm not injured - not even a scratch. My back doesn't hurt because of the hard landing, no broken bones, no sprained ankles. I didn't wake up with anything sore. The only injury that I sustained was getting a %$#!@#$~!! fiberglass splinter in my finger while I was checking my spring rods.
How high was I when the lines gave way? About 2000 ft. AGL. I had gone up to 3000 ft. AGL to get some photos of the Extravaganza field and was about 1/2 mile to the north of the site over the aerobatic box that had been set up specifically for "extreme" flying - and I had been, admittedly, doing some extremely *extreme* flying on previous days. That's another post, however. I've got video. :-)
After looking around a while, I decided to do a hard spiral to come down a little lower. At 3000 ft, the wind was keeping me almost stationary over the ground and I wanted to make a little headway. I banked hard to the left and made six or seven hard revolutions before leveling out at about 2000 AGL. About 3 seconds later, I heard a loud POP and felt the machine shudder and start a hard turn to the left. I immediately took the engine to idle. It took full right rudder to keep the machine going on a straight track. I looked up to see the left side of the chute - about 1/4th of it - flapping freely. It was obvious what had happened and I didn't want to see any more so I looked back down and concentrated on keeping the machine level and evaluating my situation.
I was over a cow pasture that had a pond in the center. I aimed, as best I could, towards one side of the pond. If the rest of the chute went and the machine started to tumble I was going to bail and take my chances on the mud alongside the pond. I did NOT aim for the water. Hitting the water from 1,500 odd feet would be like hitting concrete but I'd heard of a couple of skydivers with twisted chutes who had lived through landing in the mud. Hey! Beggars can't be choosy.
I was coming down at a good clip but it didn't seem to be that bad so I kept riding it down. About 15 seconds into my ride, I felt another pop and looked up to see that more of the chute had ripped free. That was the last time that I looked up. It wasn't serving anything constructively (and I sure didn't like what I was seeing) so I just focused on keeping the machine heading towards the cow pasture.
Somewhere in that process, I started checking to see what I had available to me. I added a little power to see if I could flatten the descent rate but the machine immediately dipped down and started to drift left again. I had a feeling that, if I went into a left side spin, I would never recover so I killed the engine and rode it down deadstick.
By this time, I was down to about 1000 AGL and had committed to riding my crippled bird down, so I slowly pushed it to the right of the pond and took stock of my situation. The machine was flying fairly flat with maybe just a tad of lean to the left but still fairly level enough to make a three wheel landing. The engine was off so I wouldn't have to worry about my prop blades flying off in all different directions. I just tightened the straps on my four-point harness and checked to make sure that nothing was loose.
As the ground came up, I braced myself in the seat and made sure that my arms and hands were locked tight. I guess that my guardian angel was watching over me because I landed almost completely evenly on the back wheels with the front coming down an instant later. The contact with the ground was hard enough to bounce me back into the air for a good distance and I came back down and bounced twice again before the machine settled down. On the third bounce, the machine rolled over on the left side. The shock of landing had been mostly absorbed on the first two bounces so it wasn't a violent stop. I immediately jumped out, righted my machine and started checking it over.
I grabbed my radio and got in contact with a pilot that flew over to check on me. I let him know that I was safe and that I'd need some help getting my bird out of the field. A farmer that had seen me come down came to see if I was ok. Apparently quite a few of the people at the Extravaganza had seen the event unfold (literally) and I had another truckload of pilots show up soon after. We loaded it onto a flatbed trailer and took it back to my trailer where it was inspected pretty closely by a number of people. There were many conjectures on why the chute failed. That's another email, however...
For those that are interested in General Aviation theory, I've got some interesting observations to make. I have recently gotten a multi-engine rating added on to my private pilot ticket. Although there is a WORLD of differences between a light twin-engine airplane and a ppc, there were some interesting similarities. With the left 1/3rd of my chute gone, the ppc reacted very similarly to a twin with the critical engine failed. It had a tendency to turn hard to the left and, if I hadn't pulled power on the engine, would have probably went into a hard unrecoverable spin (a VMC situation in a twin). I had to use almost complete right leg to keep the plane steady (rudder and a slight bank into the working engine on a twin). The downward drop wasn't as steep once I turned the engine off (feather the prop of the dead engine on a twin). I know that they're two completely different method of flying but I actually used my training in a twin engine airplane to save my skin!!!
Was I scared? Nope. Sorry guys. No pucker factor here. Those who know me well will tell you that it's not in my genes. It was just a situation that happens. You make some quick decisions and do what you have to do in order to get out of it. Adapt and survive. This is not a "I'm bad, look at me!" sermon. I just hope that the next guy that gets into a hairy situation realizes that he (or she) DOES have options if he'll stay calm and analyze things through. You don't have to just sit there and watch things get worse while you spiral into the ground. A cool head in an emergency will almost always prevail.
Will this stop me from flying aerobatics or ellipticals? Nope. This is what I enjoy and what I love to do. It won't slow me down one iota. I'm VERY careful in the maneuvers that I perform. I preflight my machine very carefully before each flight. Before I even started to do extreme maneuvers in a powered parachute, I thought through everything carefully and planned it out. In fact, I have a date with a Citabria tomorrow afternoon. Gonna go out and practice some GA aerobatics. Anybody want to come along?
The Thunderbolt 340 has been a good chute for me. It's definitely a safe chute if you're doing the day-to-day flying that 99.999% of the pilots do. I've never had a problem with it until now. It kites up straight and steady almost all of the time. Is it safe enough for extreme maneuvers? I don't know the answer to that one yet. I'll get back to y'all on that...
For the record, I don't know the people at ASAP. Don't even know who or where they are located. I've never spoken with them. The only representative of the makers of the Thunderbolt chute that I know is Marty Ignazito - the person that I bought it from. I'm not going to dis' the chute until I have time to look at my chute carefully and determine that the quality is at fault. It hasn't been up to now. I checked my logbook and saw that I had about 105 hours on that chute before it gave way. It was just a little over a year old.
This email has already been too long. Gotta go and make a buck or two. I'll give more specifics when I get home tonight. If anybody wants any more info than I've already posted, you're welcome to call me on my cell phone and, if I'm available, I'll try to answer your questions - (number removed).
Walt...