Crash, Paramotor PAP 125, D-MVJV, Leusden, 10 October 2018
The trainee pilot was making his first solo flight. The instructor stated that the trainee had made a good take-off but that he sat down in the harness relatively early. The video recording made of the take-off shows that after sitting down the paramotor descended briefly, and the metal frame of the cage almost touched the ground. However, the paramotor once again gained altitude and after some time was blown away from the take-off site by the wind. The instructor then instructed the trainee to steer back towards the field because he would otherwise be lost from the view of the instructor.
The paramotor then started to turn at a higher rotation speed, at which point the instructor told the trainee to ‘raise his hands’. This is a standard steering command. By raising his hands, the pilot lets go of the control and the paraglider flies itself, thereby once again achieving a stable condition, according to the instructor. At that point the paramotor disappeared from the view of the instructor behind the trees and as subsequently emerged, crashed. The trainee stated that when he tried to fly into the wind, the paraglider adopted a ‘stall’ position, and that he then perhaps selected too much power and at the same time pulled too hard on the steering toggles. The trainee then rotated with his body through around 180 degrees beneath the paraglider as a result of which the lines became twisted. At that time the paramotor was an altitude of approximately 200 metres, and entered a spiral dive and crashed. The trainee suffered lung contusions and injuries to his legs. The paramotor was damaged.
The full analysis of this accident is published in the Quarterly Aviation Report over the 4th quarter of 2018.
