0303 25/11/05 Landing Over Another Glider

A busy landing in a Schweizer SGS 1-35C.

The glider in front of me (another 1-35) stopped short on the runway, right where I wanted to touch down, so had to extend my final and land long.

You'll need to watch this on a big screen to have any hope of seeing the details.

00:00:00 Begin landing approach.
00:00:17 I'm on the "45" headed to the downwind leg, and the other glider comes into view from the left across my nose, and starts his downwind much closer to the runway. Two white dots over the end of the runway over the white building is the tow plane launching another glider for a "pattern tow" (new pilot training).
00:01:00 The other glider, that I expect to land behind, passes out of the frame to the left, and I turn onto my downwind leg. I'm thinking he may be landing the opposite direction on the runway, so, pondering the implications of that. I can stretch my planned approach and landing accommodate that in this late afternoon still air.
00:02:33 The other glider comes back into frame. Hard to see on the left, and disappears under my nose. So he is going to land in my direction, and in front of me.
00:03:00 The other glider reappears, just above my left hand in the frame, turning final.
00:03:04 I turn final, much higher, and well behind the other glider.
00:03:19 The other glider is low over the runway, but now the runway is obscured by the nose of my glider.
00:03:24 I extend the flaps for landing, pitching the nose down to maintain airspeed.
00:03:39 Runway now clearly in view, I'm making a slow but steep descent, and the other glider is crossing the two large white bars on the runway.
00:04:09 The other glider was blocked from exiting the runway by another glider parked in the grass to the right waiting to launch, and he rolled to a stop on the runway, right where I would want to touchdown. At low speed, the 1-35 noses over on it's skid, so it wont roll very far with the nose stuck on the ground.
00:04:14 Release some flaps, bring the nose up a bit, observe the chaos below. We have a grass strip parallel to the runway on the left. If there was any chance of not keeping some altitude I would have diverted even more to the left.
00:04:37 Rolling out, slowing, getting off the runway, hit the grass and my glider noses over onto the skid in the grass. I get out and wait for somebody to come get me in a golf cart. Sometimes I can put it close enough to my parking space to just pull it in by hand. Not today. 900 feet away.

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