Hervé Le Gallou
Date: June 23, 2012 Nationality:French
Object Type: Earth
Location: Obiou Mountains , France
COD: impact
Clothes / Suit: Wingsuit

Description:


Following your request, here is the data (strictly technical) on this fatality, :

(I jumped a few minutes before Hervé and hiked back to where he impacted afterwards)
We found no eye witness of the accident.

From this exit you can pass a ridge on your right, then depending on performance you can either fly to the left in two different valleys, or keep flying to the right and try to pass a grassy, flat and long plateau further away and join another valley. If performance is finally not good enough to pass this plateau, you have time to pull and land there.
According to jumpers at the exit, Hervé's flight was very performing, he was high above the first ridge on the right. Consequently he was in a good position to try to clear the plateau. What we suppose is that his performance dropped in the second ! part of his flight (it happened to him sometimes) and that he couldn't pass the plateau.

His canopy was retrieved with slider still attached and brakes stowed, due to lack of eye witness we don't know if the impact made the canopy come out of container or if the impact occured at the beginning of opening sequence. So we don't know what exactly happened : no pull / late pull / failed attempt to pull / other malfunction.

The only sure thing, considering the impact location, is that it wasn't a failed proximity attempt.


Attached is a picture of Hervé, that's the most recent I could find.

http://www.ledauphine.com/actualite/...A-495120334A94

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