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Comment by astrec | Hacker News Reader

This story also appears in Gavin Pretor-Pinney's The Cloudspotter's Guide, which is one of the more amusing and inspiring books about clouds I've come across.

There's a slightly more modern instance of someone surviving a CuNim under canopy: Ewa Wisnierska (and some other pilots) encountered the mother of all cloud suck during practice for 2007 paragliding world championships in Manilla, Australia. Ewa survived after reaching an altitude of 32600 feet, ostensibly because her unconscious body slumped in a position that steered her glider out of the storm by weight shift, and the accumulated ice in the canopy (paragliders are a ram-air airfoil of non-porous construction) caused a collapse which returned her to a survivable altitude. Another pilot, He Zhongpin, died after being struck by lightning in the same system.

There's a documentary called Miracle in the Storm which details Ewa's survival.

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Not long after this happened, I was in China and met up with a local glider pilot to check into the possibility of doing some flying in that country. It didn't work out (soaring is not exactly common or easy there) but we had an interesting talk. Turned out he did paragliding too and was friends with the Chinese fellow who got killed in that cloud in Australia.

This is yet another reason I won't try paragliding. I don't want to fly anything where my body forms the landing gear, nor anything whose terminal velocity is lower than the speed of updrafts in a thunderstorm.

Interesting. I had a friend come back from a flying trip to China a few weeks ago and he said much the same thing - not common and too hard logistically.

It's not the sport for everyone, that's for sure. I love it, and am never quite so happily as when the vario is screaming, although I'll admit it's 98% bliss and 2% pure terror.

It's worth mentioning that a CuNim will happily break a 747 too - that's why all aircraft give them a wide berth.

In Manilla it was a case of competitive pilots taking disproportionate risks. Based on the photos I've seen of that day, I think a lesser pilot such as myself would never even have launched.

Wonder if we met with the same fellow. Andrew Du, I think his name was.

And you're right that a more substantial aircraft is no guarantee of survival, but a glider with a Vne of 140+kts and hefty airbrakes is going to have a much better time escaping from cloud suck than a paraglider.

There are days where it's foolish to launch, of course, but days which look good can still surprise you, so I like having the extra capabilities.

With bigger gliders you get much the same thrill with the vario screaming and such, but somewhat more safety. (Still plenty of risk, of course, but a few obvious failure modes are at least reduced.)

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