Air adventure in Kuray

Once I had an interesting adventure:

I was hanging 2300m above the valley. The task had been stopped, cause of the thunderstorm coming out of the mountain chain, and I had to go down immediately. Our camp and my warm dry tent amid were right under my tummy… “Oh! Here is a nice landing-field, a few meters aside! I’d rather land right there, than to carry a heavy glider for more than kilometer in the rain or wait for the retrievals!”

…”So, let’s free the VG and come down”

I released a rope out of the clip, drop it, and.. ..nothing happened!! A long VG’s rope kept hanging from my downtube! “What the f#??? Should I land with my VG on??”

I tried it several times: nothing pleasant. 2500m above sea-level on the ground, unpredictable thermal-wind direction plus tiny landing zone.. That meant, I’d stuck into troubles :/

I started to shake the frame – nothing. Tried to overload the sail in a bank – no good. Well, at least, I had 1400 meters to solve this stupid problem. How to free a stuck VG in the air?

Simply! Just to get inside the glider and remove the problem! Right the way I did.

I climbed the frame by foot, pulled up, unzipped a sail and started to hit the crosstube ahead.. After a few attempts it yielded! A VG rope darted into the downtube in a trice while a glider skipped to a bank. So I had to throw everything, return horizontal and calm my glider. When things went right I cast a glance up: a keeltube were unpleasantly hanging out of the sail. Nothing else to do but to climb again and to zip it, and that was much more complicated :/

Further flight was without troubles except landing, of course))) The wind had changed to a slightly downwash from the mountains while I was flying, and it happened to decide if I’m landing with a face wind but down grade, or with a tail one but upwards 0o.. I chose the second. That’s the way I did my first slope-landing, successfully, thank God!

By the way, I was the first to reach the camp)))))

14-30.o7.07
Kuray, Altay, RF