The guns do stuff up from time to time

This will puzzle most,the moral I guess is to not wang it around close to the ground with a drouge chute.. Steve C

Whoops....was he ok?

Pretty dramatic landing. The puzzle isn't too hard to figure out though. There are a couple of factors that seem to be contributing. Very limited experience 'Used only once before' and a distraction of being in a competition. The pilot said... 'I thus decided a show off approach.

Drogues can turn a 14:1 wing into a 6:1 configuration or even less performance at higher speeds. Approaches with a drogue are different than without and must be treated like anything new which means doing lots of approaches starting out conservatively to learn it's characteristics before pushing the envelope.

The competition had pilots doing fast low approaches to cross a finish line asap. To begin at about 2.5 wingspans or less agl to complete the required 180 onto finbal is fine with no drogue but really does push the envelope with a drogue. It might be similar to starting the 180 at 1 to 1.5 wingspans without a drogue.

My experience includes several hundreds of landings with drogues assisting Wills Wing in R&D of drogues in the last couple of years. Various configurations were tested including the use of two drogues simultaneously.

I must really emphasize the need for all new drogue users to not just put them on and wait for the need to use them, but rather to use them constantly for perhaps a dozen or more times starting out with very conservative approaches at first then to explore their affect and performance effects using various airspeeds and finally to phase out their use to only one use per month and not less often. Caution. Currency. Familiarity.

Comp pilot or not. This advice should apply to all.

Rob McKenzie