The incident happened near the town of Wyong which is about halfway between Sydney and Newcastle on the east cost of Australia.

A youngish, but married, hang glider enthusiast was not satisfied with simply jumping off cliffs, he wanted to break speed records. He used to get himself towed up into the air and then put his hang glider into a near vertical dives to see how fast he could go. To this end he had fitted an airspeed indictor to his flying machine.

Apparently he wasn't satisfied with the speeds he was reaching and, spurred on by his apparent sucess so far, he decided to lighten his hang glider to make it go faster by drilling holes through the spars. Just how lightening a hang glider would make it go faster, I'm not sure. I would have thought that it would need to be heavier to go faster, but that's bye the bye.

Apparently our enthusiast had never heard of VNE. VNE is an important part of the specification for all aircraft and it stnads for Velocity Never Exceed. An aircraft manufacturer guarantees that their aircraft can operate at speeds of up to 5% in excess of VNE without any structural damage occurring. However they also guarantee that if VNE is exceeded by 10% then structural damage will occur, usually in the form of the wings folding.

Our enthusiast also appeared to have no idea that drilling holes in the spars of his machine would weaken it and reduce it's VNE. Predictably he did not survive his last attempt to break a speed record.

The incident made the local newspapers and television news but it wasn't until some years later that the real story unfolded. Some hang gliding enthusiasts, who had known the victim, told me about the modifications that were made to the spars to lighten them.

Submitted on 02/28/2005

Submitted by: David Lincoln
Reference: Not Avaialble

Copyright © 2005 DarwinAwards.com

Daniel said:
Neutral: Personal Account
Extreme sports are one thing, but drilling holes in your frame without some careful engineering qualifies for me.

Jack said:
Neutral: Personal Account
Obviously he wasn't a qualified Air Frame mechanic.

Charles said:
Neutral: Personal Account
While the mishap can be documented, it remains personal account because we can't confirm the unauthorized modifications. I don't think airframe manufacturers "guarantee" that the airframe will fail at 110% VNE... I think that could be expressed better. But those are quibbles... it's a good story, but the fly in the ointment is that the stupidity seems rather borderline.

Kelly said:
Definitely Keep: Honorable Mention
I have to wonder if the guy ever encountered paper with perferations in it.

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