Caution for mid-day flyers at Woodrat
Dan Wells
Just a note of caution for pilots flying mid-day.
Things have dried out quite a bit in the last week-particularly at Wells Land in particular and LongSword and Hunters in general. Thermals in all these LZs can pop mid-day flyers up and bring you down fast and hard.
Yesterday John Russell and I landed at Wells Land around 3:00 pm. John landed first and was popped up and then hit the downside of a thermal kicking off in the LZ. He was popped up maybe 30 feet in the air and then hit tremendous sink and could not slow his descent. Result was a sore neck and a compression fracture of the L2 vertebrae. John will have more to say when he files his accident report with USHPA
I landed after John and was popped up a few times but landed safely. I was a few hundred feet above him and saw his approach but not his landing.
A bit of a surprise for me as I watched and photographed a lot of pilots landing at Wells Land during the Applegate Open without incident. Probably some other factors include gusty conditions. Although when I looked at the wind graph for Wells Land it didn’t notice anything that far out of the ordinary.
Good care for John at the Asante’s ER in Medford. CT scan and assessment and he was out in 3 hours. He’s recovering at my house and will see the Ortho doc on Tuesday.
Dan
Dan Wells
Steve Teller
Sent: Saturday, July 2, 2022 11:33:38 AM
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Subject: CPC: Caution for mid-day flyers at Woodrat
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