Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Update about Frank and quick update from Chamonix

Frank and Tracye are still in Nice and they will fly home coming up Friday. Frank is doing better every day and he enjoys the beach with all their views. Today Frank was even able to have a swim in the Mediterian Sea. As you can see, he is not in a full body cast, he wears a plastic cast as you can see in the previous blog.

People asking me for more details and some people are already coming up with their own stories.
I will add a bit more to what I wrote in the last blog.

... I landed before Frank right at the sand beach. This is about half way along the beach. There was no wind and the flight as absolutely calm. Once I landed and turned around I saw Frank about 100 meters behind me laying on his back and people walking to him. So I have not seen how it happened.
Frank's statement is the following, he felt he was a bit high to land right beside me and he did an extra turn while flying slow, then flying even slower and the wing stalled and he did not have enough height to get out of the stall. Frank had a light airbag harness (which worked just fine) and landed on his behind. The wing was not a high end competition wing as some people are stating. The wing is a large Triton by Nova and is rated as EN "C". This is the same rating as his Sigma 6 and 7. To the safety, our wings are constructed with extra light material and this will make it an even safer wing as the extreme flight maneuver will reacted slower and easier then with the heavier material. The difference between the Sigma and this wing is that the break travel is shorter and Frank was not used to this and did not watch this.

The internet coffee is closing here and I will have to write about what I have done tomorrow.
In short I hiked just over 3400 meters in elevation (this is more then 4 times Swansea) in 2 days around Chamonix. Had one flight in Verbier to check out my new harness and enjoy camping.
I will write more and add pictures once I get back tomorrow from the Matterhorn.

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