When your Life is Endangered

From: Kent Dyer
Activity_Date: 11/23/01
Remote Name: 207.71.206.146

Comments

I hope this clears up some questions. My main objective is not to place blame, but to put the truth out as the incident happened. My name is Kent Dyer. I am a 47 year-old P4 pilot with 538 flights and approx. 100 hours (2 under motor power). My wife, Susan, and our fifteen-year-old son, Jeremiah, are also pilots. We all trained in Santa Barbara, and we have had the pleasure of flying as a family at many sites. I have flown 38 different sites, most of which are very active mountain thermalling sites, and I have flown with hundreds of different pilots throughout the US without even coming close to anything related to an incident. My home site is Lookout Mountain in Golden, Colorado where we have approximately 30 active pilots all of whom I have flown with many times.

This is my response to the comments regarding the incident that happened to me in the West Bowl off of Alternator in Santa Barbara. I felt that I had dealt with the incident that occurred by discussing it with Dan Kaiser once we landed. We both came to the conclusion that there was no harm done, and I was lucky to be alive. I have absolutely no reason to not tell the honest truth as it happened.

It was a light thermal day, and as always, there were pilots a few hundred feet above launch and some below launch. There were 9 Swiss pilots out in force. I was light thermalling in front of the West Bowl for about 10 minutes or so. I saw 2 pilots doing very large 360's in a thermal off the spine in front of the slide. They were 50-60 feet above me and slowly rising. I noticed that one of the pilots left the thermal to head toward the peak. I flew toward their thermal. When I arrived, in a left turn situation, I was at ~3 'clock and Dan was at ~12 o'clock. I entered the thermal and slowly began to rise. I approached the 12 o'clock position, and I looked around to see where the other pilot was as I had lost site of him due to the canopy blocking the view. I was looking all over, and I could not see him.

All of a sudden, I see him ~15 feet off my left tip coming directly towards me. He hit my left tip and his harness drug over the top of my canopy until he ended up smack in the middle causing my canopy to collapse forming a tight ball around him. I instantly started to drop straight down from ~250 feet AGL. I remember saying "Oh, this is not going to be good." Instantly after, my mind informed me that I would be throwing my reserve in 1 second. With a few quick pumps, luckily for me, as I was falling through the air, my Pro-Design Relax, burst open snapping 5 lines, 3 left brake lines, a C, and a B.

 After the glider re-inflated, I looked around, and the pilot that caused my collapse had already flown away with no regard to my outcome or safety. I know this as I was watching him as I followed him to the LZ. He landed ~3 minutes before I did. I was surprised he did not approach me as I was getting out of my harness to see if everything was OK. Instead, I had to walk over to him. I had one question that I needed to ask on my mind. That question was "Did you do that on purpose?" To me, it looked very deliberate, and I needed to find out the truth. His reply was that "I would never endanger someone's life on purpose." I replied that that was all I needed to know. He attempted to shift responsibility to me. I replied, "If I did something wrong, I apologize." He never once showed any remorse or said he was sorry for anything that happened. We shook hands, and I went back to fold up my broken glider.

In my humble opinion, when he saw me below him slowly rising, Dan had at least 10 seconds to decide whether to turn left, turn right, or go straight, and he chose to run into my glider. No matter what anyone says or thinks, he landed in the middle of my glider collapsing it, forcing it to fall straight down toward the ground, and causing it to break 5 lines. Anyone who thinks that is OK or agrees with that maneuver needs to go back and refresh the rules of the sky, which state that the pilot on the bottom has the right of way because he or she cannot see through their canopy. No matter who made what mistake, that rule still applies. There are no ifs, ands, or buts about it. This will be my only response.

Sincerely,

Kent Dyer