On Sunday 14th June Matt Church threw his reserve whilst on an XC flight from Creag Ruadh. This is the description from his BHPA Incident Report.
Summary: Collapse of paraglider resulting in reserve deployment. No injuries sustained.
Report: On an XC flight I was nearing the top of a thermal but decided to follow and potentially help another pilot Jack who had left the thermal lower, rather than wait for the other 3 pilots climbing below me. Jack had apparently found it too rough, though I was in smoother air. As I approached Jack I saw that he was in extremely turbulent air though turning, and later he and other pilots said they saw rolling vortices in the cloud base. I did not, possibly due to being higher. I prepared for turbulence by bending my legs a bit and having a touch of brake. However the wing had a violent collapse on the right side resulting in an immediate dive to about the horizon while spinning. The wing came back above me with about 4 twists but I could not get hold of the control lines above the twists. The wing dived and spun a few times again (so definitely turbulent air!) and then went into autorotation, at which point I threw my reserve. This came out cleanly but the wing came down to the horizon. Trying to collapse or pull the wing I could only reach just above the twists. I was able to pull the glider a bit and while it was moving around a fair bit the vario wasn’t making big sink noises and the descent didn’t feel fast. However with the amount of movement I decided to let go to try to pull in again but could not reach above the twists. Down planing then definitely started (from my track log descent rate was 8-9m/s) so I got my hook knife out. On my first cut only a couple of lines went, as hoped, but did not significantly change the wing. The second cut went through all the remaining lines and the wing drifted off (definitely the most disconcerting event in all my paragliding). The parachute stabilised above me, looking very small on its own. I had time to prepare for a PLF before arriving at the ground, which had come up much faster once I had nothing else to occupy myself with other than look at it, though it was 6-10 seconds looking at the track log. No injuries, just needed time to get my breath back. I confirmed with my friends I was OK via radio and that they didn’t need to land to assist. Jack landed at the bottom of the glen, not having a radio, but amazingly we both briefly had enough phone reception to report my status. I found the wing only 20m away, though totally forgot about the reserve bag and handle until the following morning when preparing to repack, but I was able to borrow a glider and front mounted reserve to fly in Torridon that day. Obviously if I had caught the dive this would not have happened however it was so quick, despite being prepared for it, I think it is just an academic observation.
Note: On the form the experience asks for number of flights whereas the summaries in Skywings are in hours. My total hours were 2976 at the time of the incident of which 80 were in the previous 6 months.
Equipment: Ozone Mantra M7; Skywalk Range X-Alps 3 harness, Advance SQR Light 100 parachute. All up weight about 95kg (bit less than 90 without the wing).
