Paraglider tandem acro test flight gone bad - spectacular incident

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One of the top3 sketchiest moments of my paragliding career, from 2010! Hopefully it will never happen to you!

The 3rd ever aerobatics tandem test flight with the first U-Turn 'Twin Force' prototype gone terribly bad when all 'A', 'B' and 'C' upper gallery lines snapped under 6 G load of the Infinite Tumbling maneuver. The canopy itself however remained perfectly undamaged.
At the end of the video U-Turn's designer Ernst Strobl tells facts and figures how he already reinforced this very first prototype to stand the load of 10G (!) but despite the large safety margin this incident happened. We never figured how this is physically possible that all those lines snapped instantly together with barely any delay whatsoever. The final product is now built twice as strong as the first one and since then there were absolutely no more issues with the strength of the wing.

Pilot: Pál Takáts
Co-Pilot. Gábor Kézi
Wing: U-Turn Twin Force
Date: 19.05.2010
Location: Ölüdeniz, Turkey

U-Turn paragliders: http://u-turn.de
Tandem reserve parachute: http://www.vonblon.com/dt/papillxl.htm
Tandem harnesses used: http://supair.com
Follow Pal Takats: http://facebook.com/takats.pal
Follow Gabor Kezi: https://www.facebook.com/gaborkezi
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Latest Comments

afischba's picture

Glad this made it to the light of day, such an awesome video. Gabor was so fast with that reserve! Thanks for sharing Pal!

arabind's picture

i guess its also the first video ever where the pilot becomes the passenger and vice versa :o)