OH! SHIT! This was a new feeling, I had always wondered about moments like this. It’s like hearing about some kid getting knocked off his bicycle and wondering what you would feel like if it was your own kid, stuff like that. This was the kind of moment that always happened to the other guy. You know, Super Nonks flying gliders too hot for them on hills too big for them. This wasn’t me; not these days, not at my age, and anyway, this was serious shit. Everybody knows that you never let your glider dive past the horizon! Everybody knows that!

So what the hell was it doing down there?

Well, I didn’t let it dive past the horizon; in fact I have absolutely no memory of my Vertex Paraglider ever passing the horizontal at all, not no way, no how.

Still, there it was, there was no arguing, my canopy was below me!

So how the hell did it get down there? True there had been some very bad air. I had experienced a massive and sudden full frontal deflation a few moments ago, but I thought that I was sorting it out. I do have, however, have a vague memory of a second and even more violent deflation while trying to control the recovery from the first one. Is that what caused this?

The vision below provided no further clues.

I reminded myself that I was thousands of feet high, so I had lots of time to muse about this. In fact, time itself was moving very slowly. I was only just into the first few milliseconds of this drama, and I was still looking at a freeze frame of the glider below me, wondering how it got there.

By the 10^th or 15^thmillisecond, I noticed for the first time that the lines were slack! Oh Double Shit! I thought, no control!

I had hardly made any progress toward my canopy, now beginning to wrinkle into a hammock shape below me, when ballistics came to mind. By the 30^th or 40^th millisecond I began to calculate my trajectory and the relative position of this potential purple shroud. By the 200^th millisecond it looked like I might not actually fall into the canopy after all. Great! I thought, things are looking a bit better.

The world was beginning to speed up again as I approached the crumpled sail somewhere around the 500^th millisecond and as I plummeted past it, inches from nylon, I began to wonder if the lines would be able to take the shock of a such a fast re-inflation.

I shouldn’t have worried, not about the lines anyway, and as I entered the first full second (things were moving faster now) I just mushed in on my left side. There was no shock, not even a heavy pull and I started to slow down. I was still sideways to the ground and I had not yet regained anything like control, when something new started to happen.

I couldn’t believe my eyes. As I watched, horrified, my risers were twisting up in front of me! …

“Man! “You must be a super nonk,” I complained to myself, “You never never allow the glider to spin, you know that”. “Eeeeyow.”

Well allow it or not, I felt a strong jerk to the left and whipped round like a rat on a rope. That was when things finally stabilised.

“Oh Bugger!! I’ve really got some sorting out to do here”. I thought as the Gs built up. I was still very embarrassed with myself for letting it happen in the first place. I’m supposed to be able to handle this kind of thing. OK, I’ve had a few rough moments in the past. I even have a couple of previous spins to my name, but I have always been able to sort them out quickly and I had learned a lot in the process.

“I don’t fly super canopies anymore,” I yelled at my glider but it wasn’t listening.

“You’re only an intermediate canopy, come on! You’re not supposed to do this sort of thing.” … Still nothing.

“Say, How high are we anyway?” My glider still didn’t answer as we approached the third full second since the big dive.

Eight thousand feet below me was the South African Kalahari Desert. We had been winching from Kuruman for the last few days. I love this place and the flying had been great. I was really enjoying myself up to now. “You’re really not supposed to do this kind of thing.” I moaned again to the glider, well annoyed. I’m now stabilised in a blinding spin and pulling serious Gs, and I’m not making any progress with the riser twists. “Bugger, this is serious”, but I’m thinking; “at least I’m still high!”

Above me everything was a complete mess. The glider was mostly wrapped up in a ball leaving a small section of wing still flying. This little wing tip was, in fact, doing a really good job and flying very fast but with very little lift. The resulting descent was loudly announced by my vario bleating like a wounded heifer in my rapid decent at the 13 mtr/sec (47 kph According to my barograph later)

Fifth second!

The whole arrangement was as tight as a suspension bridge. “This is reserve time!” Was my earnest thought, and I made a mental note of where my reserve handle was… but wait a bit.. I put aside my immediate problems and had a look down. “I’m still really high” I thought, no point in pulling a reserve eight thousand feet from the ground, especially in this country. Below me was nothing but spinning desert but it was still a long way down. I really wanted to try and sort myself out. For one thing the reserve might not work properly and I could end up in worse trouble (Yes – it was still possible). Anyway, I didn’t want to float down with no steering from such a height. I could drift miles from the road, and it was very hot and dry down there. Best thing for the moment was to have another go at canopy recovery.

Grasping the triple twisted risers with both hands; I tried to fling myself in the direction of my dizzy spin. Maybe this will work, I hoped, as I thrust the risers away and kicked and twisted so that I was now hurled around the outside of the spin. Unfortunately, when I arrived back at the risers again, all the twists were still tightly in place. The faster I twisted and kicked the faster the canopy span. I was stuck!

Tenth second

I was being methodical at this point and trying to remember all the times an instructor or a training video had tried to warn me about “getting your risers in a twist”. Don’t let it happen is the usual first instruction. Should this first instruction go wrong, the normal suggestion is to try to push or pull the risers apart but these weren’t going anywhere, these boys were bar tight. The little piece of wing above me really had it sussed now and was putting all the energy it could convert from my body weight into speed. We were blistering. I tried the push and kick out again but by now I didn’t really think it would work. “Oh Shit, this really is reserve time!”

Twentieth second

I think again about the reserve handle but in spite of all that is going on, and all the height I have lost, I’m still higher then average cloud base on a good day back in Old Blighty. I decide to have another go!

“Oh! Hell, now I remember” “Full Stall”. I’m beginning to think now. (It really is a good thing I’m high…) I would be under rag or in the bag by now if I had been flying in the mountains. “I love the nice safe flatlands” I reflect to myself. This was just as well because the lovely flatlands were coming up to meet me, fast! “Ya, that’s it” I confirmed “I’ve got to stall it.”

I should have known this of course and further, I had spent what is now proving to be a very well spent hour watching Jock Sanderson’s excellent DHV Video before I left London. I reviewed it three or 4 times thanks to Mark Begg who, knowing me rather better then I know myself sometimes, had brought it over and instructed me to “Study it!”

“Ok, I’ve sussed it now. I have been trying to cure the symptom not the cause.” The malfunction wasn’t the spin; it was a massive cravat trapping most of the canopy. The cravat has then caused the spin by allowing that energetic little wing tip to show a sycamore leaf a trick or two.

Ya, that’s it. (..hmm, still 6,000 ft, I estimate my distance from the spinning yellow whirlpool) Ya, full stall, but aren’t the lines trapped?.. I would probably have worked out that I could reach the lines above the twist but the handles were in my hand and I might still get them to shift. ( Hum … I reckon I don’t need to pull the rag until I break 2000 feet. That should give me plenty of time.)

Thirtieth second

Thinking about my reserve makes me think of Heiner Meyer (a well-known rag puller) and Johnfred Markum (worlds best winch driver) below me on the Revilo road. Heiner is a South African competition pilot from good German stock. He had landed earlier and was already in the retrieve vehicle below. They had been waiting on the road to retrieve me too but I had got a good low save about 15 minutes previously. The drift was light so I was still in their neighborhood although I had been very high in the thermal. Heiner, having stopped flying had started drinking and had been on the radio, trying to talk me into performing a reverse spiral dive for him. He had described this maneuver to me in detail in the bar the previous night. Something about doing a normal wing over then pulling the same break line again, hard! Well, I had stoutly declined to try it. Apart from being a silly, dangerous and super nonk maneuver, I was on a mission. I had flown 102k the day before and today was looking even better. Today was going to be the good one and I was thinking “personal best”.

Now I was really hoping that he was still watching. This was as good an aerobatics maneuver as anyone could ask for. There might even have been a beer on offer. I thought about calling him on the radio but I remembered I had some important things to do first. How about a photo? No, no, (thirty-eight seconds) and I started to pull on the lines in earnest. The left one was well jammed and anyway, it didn’t seem to be much good. The whole left side of the canopy was completely collapsed and the lines looked slack in the tangle of risers.

THE RIGHT ONE MOVED A BIT! Great, .. try again..

I pulled hard and the line began to come in. As I pulled it, firmly and steadily I could see the wingtip begin to slow down and fatten up. I continued to pull and the wing got smaller and smaller as it lost its malevolence and began to resemble its bigger half, still tied in a knot. And then a very lovely sequence of events transpired. “Flup, flup flup”, that was it, the glider just unfolded, “sweet as a nut”. It was no more violent or dramatic then popping up a student canopy in an eight mph breeze on Combe Gibbet. The glider simply opened above me. Furthermore, the twists had disappeared, as if by magic.

I Was Flying Again!

“Just as sweet as a nut”. The expression still hangs in my head. I don’t know if it was nut-like or not but I still haven’t got over how beautifully and gently the glider recovered, almost by itself, from the edge of stall.

“As the pressure comes off the flying wing and the glider starts to fall back, it frees itself from the lines trapping it and flies away.” I paraphrase his words as I picture Jockey telling me this on the video. Hell! Why did it take me 50 seconds to work it out? (I love being high!). Well I tried it Jockey, and it bloody works!

To make things even rosier, I now noticed that it was nice and warm down here. It had been quite cold moments before. What was more, wonder of wonders, I was in a light thermal! My ancient Davron verio made its familiar “ok go for it, its only a gentle one” noise and I began a warm and lazy climb back to nine thousand feet. They say “you should always get back on the horse” and I considered myself lucky not only to have survived the ordeal intact but also to be given the opportunity climb back up for another go.

This thermal took me even higher then the previous one, and the paragliding gods were good to me for it remained gentle all the way up, even through the inversion layer, which had caused the problem in the first place.

I would have liked to continue my flight of course. I had 50k under my belt already, I was high and there was plenty of flying time left in the day. Also, my reactions and nerves weren’t too bad (although I reacted rather nervously in the moderate turbulence going back down through the inversion the second time). OK, I was a bit stressed but my real problem now was that I was starting to feel sick!

My max G ride on the runaway sycamore leaf was more then my stomach could take, and I was not feeling at all well now. Reluctantly I decided to land. I didn’t even bother to stretch out my glide and spiraled down to the recovery vehicle waiting below. (No they hadn’t seen my aerobatics.) The spiral dive (bad idea) finally did the trick with my stomach, and my last go at flying skills that day was the attempted bombardment of Heiner and Johnfred from 300 ft with the contents of my distressed stomach. I was told later that it was a very good thing I missed, -They had the keys to the four-by-four!

John Meijer, also South African, who had taken off first and was about 10 k ahead of me, went on to land past Revilo for his second PB of the week at 117 k. His Girlfriend, Fernanda who had never flown more then 25 k in her life, also landed ahead of me to notch up her PB, 60k. (Well, I said, it was going to be a good day.) I only flew 50.7 k that day which wasn’t much in the conditions. Still, all things considered, for a change, I was really quite glad to be on the ground.

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