[Boiling point]

From my experience here’s what I could tell from the video. The hill wasn’t tall enough. The slope of the hill was shallower than the glide ratio of his glider.

[fireman15]

It looks like a typical “training hill”. A lot of people feel more comfortable if they don’t get very far off of the ground. It is probably steep enough to get a good “sled run” especially if there is a bit of a breeze. Actually to me his technique didn’t look bad. I don’t think he had enough airspeed to get his nose up once he left the ground. A little more speed and he probably would have made it all the way to the bottom of the hill.

You see this type of mishap at every training hill. A guy I was taking lessons with broke his arm about the 4th time he made that same type of “landing”. I weighed about 50 pounds less than him and had a double surface glider. I made it to the bottom of the hill everytime and he crashed everytime. Even with “training wheels” he still managed to break his arm.