Put your money where the risk is

[Bret Hess]

The discussion "Gliding risk" has been excellent for the most part. To me the most compelling thoughts are about gradually getting conditioned to taking increasing risks ("normalization of deviance"), that experience is a curse as well as a blessing, and that fatalities are just the apex of a pyramid of risk-taking, close calls, incidents and injuries.

The problem is that the risk taking and close calls don't "hurt". Instead we usually get **rewarded** by more points and praise because we fly farther or longer. If we could make the risk taking and close calls "hurt", we would avoid a lot of injuries and fatalities.

There are now apps that help you be disciplined by putting money on the line over whether you meet your standards or not. See https://georgehalachev.com/2017/06/07/6-accountability-apps-that-will-skyrocket-your-success/ for example. When you mess up your money goes to an organization you hate or to the others on the app that didn't mess up. The point is that it just "doesn't matter" if you skip exercising for a day, so we skip it for days on end and then all the days matter to our health long-term. Losing money helps it to matter that day. If you lose $20 for skipping the gym, you lose $20, but you can't afford that very often

Flying risks are very similar. Each risk doesn't appear to matter that day, but we know it can all add up without warning. So maybe we should use technology and the power of "fear of loss" to help us at the bottom of the fatality pyramid: risk taking. Post-flight analysis of igc tracks could pretty accurately detect low thermaling, slow landing patterns, slow flight or turns on ridges or near other terrain, maybe near-collisions. It can detect getting caught in terrain without a safe glide margin through the terrain to an airport or a field.

For the fear of loss, scale is important here. $20 isn't enough. I guess you would want to put in at least one year's soaring expenses, or maybe 1/10 or more the value of your glider. You would lose (on a sliding scale) a small portion or all your money depending on the severity of the risk you took.

So how would we do this? Pilots join a group for a season and put in all the money in advance. They agree to upload *all* their flight tracks or (better) use services that track them real-time on cell phones where coverage exists (e.g Skylines flight tracking). They get a safety analysis of each flight showing the parts of the flight with the most detectable risk. The reports might be public, and we certainly publicize the pilots who are flying safely. And pilots lose money for their riskiest behavior. Maybe the money lost could be less if they self-report the behavior. Some gain a little money at the end of the season. We could set uniform standards, or each person could set their own at the beginning of the season. All this could be very motivating and create a real safety culture.

[[email protected]]

Will the accused pilot have a say in jury selection?

[[email protected]]

I kind of like the concept, it has general potential.

However what is definitely risky/dangerous practice for one pilot, is a normal day, well within safe boundaries for another pilot with a different skill set.

Example: for the type of flying I do, thermalling/saves at the 400-600 ft agl level are not a risky manouver given that I have a landing spot already studied out and within direct reach and having literally thousands of hours of low level flying and turning. For someone else this would be a very bad idea
Who judges whats considered dangerous or not?

How about each pilot submits a list of what their personal boundaries are, then we judge and watch for the times that pilot breaks his own submitted set of do’s and don’t. That could be directly useful. I know I broke one of my own personal rules this last season, no harm no foul but if I volunteered myself to an outside judge they could possibly bring to my attention other unrecognized (to me) instances where I was seen to come very close or break my own safety-set.

[Richard Livingston]

In mountain climbing there is the concept of "objective hazard". This is
a hazard that is recognized, such as climbing up a gully that occasionally
experiences rock falls. If you are in the gully when this happens it would
almost certainly be fatal. The wise climber recognizes this hazard and
decides what he can do to mitigate it, such as climbing before dawn when
rock falls are less likely (warming by sunlight tends to trigger these). He
then has to decide if, for a particular situation, the risk is worth the
reward (getting to the peak, or getting back to camp before the weather
turns bad).

The wise climber sometimes loses this gamble. The unwise climber loses
more often. Soaring is similar in that there are hazards that, through
training, experience and acquired skill, can be recognized and mitigated,
but never completely avoided. Each pilot must assess their own skill versus
the situation and decide if the reward is worth the risk. The wise pilots
will sometimes lose, but the unwise pilots will lose more often.

Rich L

[2G]

On Tuesday, November 12, 2019 at 6:40:44 AM UTC-8, Richard Livingston wrote:
> In mountain climbing there is the concept of "objective hazard". This is
> a hazard that is recognized, such as climbing up a gully that occasionally
> experiences rock falls. If you are in the gully when this happens it would
> almost certainly be fatal. The wise climber recognizes this hazard and
> decides what he can do to mitigate it, such as climbing before dawn when
> rock falls are less likely (warming by sunlight tends to trigger these). He
> then has to decide if, for a particular situation, the risk is worth the
> reward (getting to the peak, or getting back to camp before the weather
> turns bad).
>
> The wise climber sometimes loses this gamble. The unwise climber loses
> more often. Soaring is similar in that there are hazards that, through
> training, experience and acquired skill, can be recognized and mitigated,
> but never completely avoided. Each pilot must assess their own skill versus
> the situation and decide if the reward is worth the risk. The wise pilots
> will sometimes lose, but the unwise pilots will lose more often.
>
> Rich L

I challenge you guys to go back thru the last few years of glider accidents in the US and find ANY fatal accidents that fall into these categories. Generally, they are the consequence of ****-poor airmanship.

Tom

[Eric Greenwell[_4_]]

2G wrote on 11/15/2019 10:16 PM:
> On Tuesday, November 12, 2019 at 6:40:44 AM UTC-8, Richard Livingston wrote:
>> In mountain climbing there is the concept of "objective hazard". This is
>> a hazard that is recognized, such as climbing up a gully that occasionally
>> experiences rock falls. If you are in the gully when this happens it would
>> almost certainly be fatal. The wise climber recognizes this hazard and
>> decides what he can do to mitigate it, such as climbing before dawn when
>> rock falls are less likely (warming by sunlight tends to trigger these). He
>> then has to decide if, for a particular situation, the risk is worth the
>> reward (getting to the peak, or getting back to camp before the weather
>> turns bad).
>>
>> The wise climber sometimes loses this gamble. The unwise climber loses
>> more often. Soaring is similar in that there are hazards that, through
>> training, experience and acquired skill, can be recognized and mitigated,
>> but never completely avoided. Each pilot must assess their own skill versus
>> the situation and decide if the reward is worth the risk. The wise pilots
>> will sometimes lose, but the unwise pilots will lose more often.
>>
>> Rich L
>
> I challenge you guys to go back thru the last few years of glider accidents in the US and find ANY fatal accidents that fall into these categories. Generally, they are the consequence of ****-poor airmanship.

I don't recall any recent incidents, but getting sucked into a cloud may be an
example of slowly reducing your margins because you got away with it before. I'm
thinking of Erik Larson, who wasn't killed, but bailed out of his ASH26E when it
became enveloped in a cloud while wave flying out of Minden. Another is Kempton
Izuno, who got pulled up into the cloud during thermalling, and very narrowly
avoided catastrophe. Both could have gone far worse. Another example might be Bill
Gawthrop's crash short of the runway at Truckee. All three of these were very good
pilots at the time of the incidents.


--
Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA (change ".netto" to ".us" to email me)
- "A Guide to Self-Launching Sailplane Operation"
https://sites.google.com/site/motorgliders/publications/download-the-guide-1

[2G]

On Saturday, November 16, 2019 at 6:12:07 AM UTC-8, Eric Greenwell wrote:
> 2G wrote on 11/15/2019 10:16 PM:
> > On Tuesday, November 12, 2019 at 6:40:44 AM UTC-8, Richard Livingston wrote:
> >> In mountain climbing there is the concept of "objective hazard". This is
> >> a hazard that is recognized, such as climbing up a gully that occasionally
> >> experiences rock falls. If you are in the gully when this happens it would
> >> almost certainly be fatal. The wise climber recognizes this hazard and
> >> decides what he can do to mitigate it, such as climbing before dawn when
> >> rock falls are less likely (warming by sunlight tends to trigger these). He
> >> then has to decide if, for a particular situation, the risk is worth the
> >> reward (getting to the peak, or getting back to camp before the weather
> >> turns bad).
> >>
> >> The wise climber sometimes loses this gamble. The unwise climber loses
> >> more often. Soaring is similar in that there are hazards that, through
> >> training, experience and acquired skill, can be recognized and mitigated,
> >> but never completely avoided. Each pilot must assess their own skill versus
> >> the situation and decide if the reward is worth the risk. The wise pilots
> >> will sometimes lose, but the unwise pilots will lose more often.
> >>
> >> Rich L
> >
> > I challenge you guys to go back thru the last few years of glider accidents in the US and find ANY fatal accidents that fall into these categories.. Generally, they are the consequence of ****-poor airmanship.
>
> I don't recall any recent incidents, but getting sucked into a cloud may be an
> example of slowly reducing your margins because you got away with it before. I'm
> thinking of Erik Larson, who wasn't killed, but bailed out of his ASH26E when it
> became enveloped in a cloud while wave flying out of Minden. Another is Kempton
> Izuno, who got pulled up into the cloud during thermalling, and very narrowly
> avoided catastrophe. Both could have gone far worse. Another example might be Bill
> Gawthrop's crash short of the runway at Truckee. All three of these were very good
> pilots at the time of the incidents.
>
>
> --
> Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA (change ".netto" to ".us" to email me)
> - "A Guide to Self-Launching Sailplane Operation"
> https://sites.google.com/site/motorgliders/publications/download-the-guide-1

None of these were fatal accidents (Bill's was very close). Flying in wave these days w/o an artificial horizon is a judgment, not an airmanship, error. Furthermore, Bill's accident was the result of very unusual winds, which is just bad luck. The original post specifically mentioned fatalities.

Tom

[Eric Greenwell[_4_]]

2G wrote on 11/16/2019 4:56 PM:
> On Saturday, November 16, 2019 at 6:12:07 AM UTC-8, Eric Greenwell wrote:
>> 2G wrote on 11/15/2019 10:16 PM:
>>> On Tuesday, November 12, 2019 at 6:40:44 AM UTC-8, Richard Livingston
>>> wrote:
>>>> In mountain climbing there is the concept of "objective hazard". This
>>>> is a hazard that is recognized, such as climbing up a gully that
>>>> occasionally experiences rock falls. If you are in the gully when this
>>>> happens it would almost certainly be fatal. The wise climber recognizes
>>>> this hazard and decides what he can do to mitigate it, such as climbing
>>>> before dawn when rock falls are less likely (warming by sunlight tends to
>>>> trigger these). He then has to decide if, for a particular situation,
>>>> the risk is worth the reward (getting to the peak, or getting back to
>>>> camp before the weather turns bad).
>>>>
>>>> The wise climber sometimes loses this gamble. The unwise climber loses
>>>> more often. Soaring is similar in that there are hazards that, through
>>>> training, experience and acquired skill, can be recognized and
>>>> mitigated, but never completely avoided. Each pilot must assess their
>>>> own skill versus the situation and decide if the reward is worth the
>>>> risk. The wise pilots will sometimes lose, but the unwise pilots will
>>>> lose more often.
>>>>
>>>> Rich L
>>>
>>> I challenge you guys to go back thru the last few years of glider accidents
>>> in the US and find ANY fatal accidents that fall into these categories..
>>> Generally, they are the consequence of ****-poor airmanship.
>>
>> I don't recall any recent incidents, but getting sucked into a cloud may be
>> an example of slowly reducing your margins because you got away with it
>> before. I'm thinking of Erik Larson, who wasn't killed, but bailed out of his
>> ASH26E when it became enveloped in a cloud while wave flying out of Minden.
>> Another is Kempton Izuno, who got pulled up into the cloud during
>> thermalling, and very narrowly avoided catastrophe. Both could have gone far
>> worse. Another example might be Bill Gawthrop's crash short of the runway at
>> Truckee. All three of these were very good pilots at the time of the
>> incidents.
>>
>>
>> -- Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA (change ".netto" to ".us" to email
>> me) - "A Guide to Self-Launching Sailplane Operation"
>> https://sites.google.com/site/motorgliders/publications/download-the-guide-1
>
> None of these were fatal accidents (Bill's was very close). Flying in wave
> these days w/o an artificial horizon is a judgment, not an airmanship, error.
> Furthermore, Bill's accident was the result of very unusual winds, which is
> just bad luck. The original post specifically mentioned fatalities.

I was giving examples that I thought illustrated the concept, and perhaps jog
peoples memories for more examples. They didn't need to be fatal for that purpose,
especially since I wasn't certain "loses" referred only to fatal events. Erik
Larson did have an artificial horizon, but as I recall, it was not on when he
entered cloud, and it didn't spin up fast enough to help him. I think Bill's
accident was not just bad luck, but partly the result of a purposeful reduction in
margins. As I recall, he wanted to land short to avoid pushing the plane back a
longer ways, instead of landing long as using the turnout further down the runway.

[Ramy[_2_]]

Tom, the sad reality is that the cause of majority of fatal accidents is not known. There are usually only speculations. So I am curious which fatal accidents in recent years you have enough data to conclude they were due to poor airmanship, and where do you get this data. Certainly not from most NTSB reports.
In fact, most of the incidents which were clearly due to poor airmanship or unnecessary risk taking that we know of are the non fatal ones.

Ramy

[RR]

Tom,Iam not sure I know what you mean by **** poor aitmanship. Do you mean poor stick and rudder skills? Someone that would be considered an inexperienced pilot? As noted, we dont realy know what exactly happend in most fatal accidents, as there are no survivors to interview.

The ones that hit home for me are very experienced pilots, who I asume were using their excellent stick and rudder skills but that could not save them.. I believe in most of those cases, it was the erosion of personal margins that got them in trouble. For each one of those accidents I have added to my own margins.

The old saying The superior pilot uses his superior judgment to avoid needing to use his superior flying skills...

[Scott Williams[_2_]]

On Sunday, November 17, 2019 at 7:49:19 AM UTC-6, RR wrote:
> Tom,Iam not sure I know what you mean by **** poor aitmanship. Do you mean poor stick and rudder skills? Someone that would be considered an inexperienced pilot? As noted, we dont realy know what exactly happend in most fatal accidents, as there are no survivors to interview.
>
> The ones that hit home for me are very experienced pilots, who I asume were using their excellent stick and rudder skills but that could not save them. I believe in most of those cases, it was the erosion of personal margins that got them in trouble. For each one of those accidents I have added to my own margins.
>
> The old saying The superior pilot uses his superior judgment to avoid needing to use his superior flying skills...

Websters' expanded definition:Airmanship

Airmanship is skill and knowledge applied to aerial navigation, similar to seamanship in maritime navigation. Airmanship covers a broad range of desirable behaviors and abilities in an aviator. It is not simply a measure of skill or technique, but also a measure of a pilot’s awareness of the aircraft, the environment in which it operates, and of his own capabilities. �A sound acquaintance with the principles of flight, �The ability to operate an airplane with competence and precision both on the ground and in the air, and �The exercise of sound judgment that results in optimal operational safety and efficiency. The three fundamental principles of expert airmanship are skill, proficiency, and the discipline to apply them in a safe and efficient manner. Discipline is the foundation of airmanship. The complexity of the aviation environment demands a foundation of solid airmanship, and a healthy, positive approach to combating pilot error. The actions of Captain Alfred C. Haynes and the crew of United Airlines Flight 232 are often cited as an exemplar of good airmanship. They were able to maintain control of their crippled McDonnell Douglas DC-10, bringing it to a survivable "controlled crash" in Sioux City, Iowa, after a complete loss of all flight controls following an engine failure in July 1989. They did this by improvising a control scheme on the spot using differential thrust on the two working engines. Captain Haynes credited his Crew Resource Management training as one of the key factors that saved his own life, and many others.

I will chime in, and IMHO, airmanship is vastly more than "stick and rudder skills"

[2G]

On Saturday, November 16, 2019 at 11:36:33 PM UTC-8, Ramy wrote:
> Tom, the sad reality is that the cause of majority of fatal accidents is not known. There are usually only speculations. So I am curious which fatal accidents in recent years you have enough data to conclude they were due to poor airmanship, and where do you get this data. Certainly not from most NTSB reports.
> In fact, most of the incidents which were clearly due to poor airmanship or unnecessary risk taking that we know of are the non fatal ones.
>
> Ramy

Ramy,

Oh, yes you can. Here is the last fatal glider accident just last month:

"A witness was also a glider pilot stated that the accident flight was among a group of three
other cross-county glider flights that intended to depart 1N7, fly over Burnt Cabins,
Pennsylvania, and then return to 1N7. The witness stated that he departed 1N7 around 0930,
and the accident glider took off around 0945. He further stated that it was not common for the
glider pilots to fly together but they would maintain radio contact throughout the day and help
each other with geographical points and finding thermals for lift. He said that around 1400 the
accident pilot radioed and said that he was at Burnt Cabins and turning around to return to
1N7. Around 1515, the accident pilot reported that he was climbing in a weak thermal near
Tamaqua, Pennsylvania. That was the last communication he heard from the accident pilot.
According to another witness, he was working outside when he looked up and saw "an
airplane" about .5 mile away heading straight down. He stopped and watched "the airplane" for
a few seconds before it disappeared behind some trees."

The guy clearly had a stall-spin at low altitude, which is the result of ****-poor airmanship. I have commented about low saves in the past. Here is the one last August:

"According to multiple witnesses located at WN15, the glider arrived overhead at about 800 to
1,000 ft above ground level (agl), descending and circling left around the southern half of the
airport. On the last circle, about 300 ft agl, the landing gear was seen coming down followed
very quickly by the glider banking left to about 30-40o
.. The glider then struck three trees and
rotated 270o
while now descending in about a 75° nose-low attitude. The glider struck the
grass runway nose first, rebounded up and back about 10 ft, then came to rest upright and
listing on the left wing."

Tell me that was superb airmanship.

Tom

[2G]

On Sunday, November 17, 2019 at 5:49:19 AM UTC-8, RR wrote:
> Tom,Iam not sure I know what you mean by **** poor aitmanship. Do you mean poor stick and rudder skills? Someone that would be considered an inexperienced pilot? As noted, we dont realy know what exactly happend in most fatal accidents, as there are no survivors to interview.
>
> The ones that hit home for me are very experienced pilots, who I asume were using their excellent stick and rudder skills but that could not save them. I believe in most of those cases, it was the erosion of personal margins that got them in trouble. For each one of those accidents I have added to my own margins.
>
> The old saying The superior pilot uses his superior judgment to avoid needing to use his superior flying skills...

Airmanship is the ability to competently command an aircraft in all phases of flight, including flying, preparation and judgment. If you skillfully fly yourself into a box canyon and crash, you exhibited poor judgment, therefore poor airmanship. If you stall and spin an aircraft turning final, that's poor airmanship. If you take off w/o checking the weather an fly skillfully into a thunderstorm, that's poor airmanship.

Tom

[Ramy[_2_]]

Tom, you chooses the 10% or so of accidents which had enough data to come to a conclusion. Even then I would question most NTSB reports until I talked to the locals who knew the pilots involved and can confirm the accuracy of the report. I personally know of quiet a few fatal accidents which can not be classified as poor airmanship. At the same time I am aware of many poor airmanship which did not result in fatal accidents.
I guess what I am trying to say here is don’t fall into the “this would never happen to me since I am a good pilot� category. I know I don’t kid myself that any of these accidents couldn’t happen to me.

Ramy

[2G]

On Monday, November 18, 2019 at 10:12:04 PM UTC-8, Ramy wrote:
> Tom, you chooses the 10% or so of accidents which had enough data to come to a conclusion. Even then I would question most NTSB reports until I talked to the locals who knew the pilots involved and can confirm the accuracy of the report. I personally know of quiet a few fatal accidents which can not be classified as poor airmanship. At the same time I am aware of many poor airmanship which did not result in fatal accidents.
> I guess what I am trying to say here is don’t fall into the “this would never happen to me since I am a good pilot� category. I know I don’t kid myself that any of these accidents couldn’t happen to me.
>
> Ramy

Ramy,

I went thru ALL of the fatal accidents this year before my original post: these are just the last two. Both of these accidents had witnesses, and the conclusions are pretty clear-cut. You are more than welcome to do your own review of all past fatals (please don't bother with the non-fatals as this is much less conclusive). This pattern of poor airmanship is startling because it is preventable. It is sort of like car accidents: if you drive distracted you shouldn't be surprised if you have an accident.

Tom

[Ramy[_2_]]

Funny how you get to the opposite conclusions. Are we talking about the same sport? Anyway, I did my own analysis and almost all fatal accidents are inconclusive, mostly speculation, while almost all non fatal accidents are conclusive (since they all have witness).
Anyway, I’ll bow out now.

Ramy

[krasw]

So what other speculated reasons are there for these accidents? Technical issue? "Sudden wind gust from nowhere"?

[MNLou]

I always wonder how many accidents are a result of an in-air medical problem.

Lou

[2G]

On Monday, November 18, 2019 at 10:40:24 PM UTC-8, Ramy wrote:
> Funny how you get to the opposite conclusions. Are we talking about the same sport? Anyway, I did my own analysis and almost all fatal accidents are inconclusive, mostly speculation, while almost all non fatal accidents are conclusive (since they all have witness).
> Anyway, I’ll bow out now.
>
> Ramy

Ramy,

I reviewed, again, all of the 2019 fatal accidents. One sounds like a medical emergency suffered upon a successful outlanding, all of the others were clear loss of control of a functioning glider. One guy hit the only tree in a field during an outlanding.

Tom

[CindyB[_2_]]

On Tuesday, November 19, 2019 at 7:16:13 AM UTC-8, MNLou wrote:
> I always wonder how many accidents are a result of an in-air medical problem.
>
> Lou

Lou --

Too many.
We know of many pilots who had documented medical issues, medications, for things like: extreme high blood pressure, heart arrythmias and looming bypass surgeries, or case histories that would preclude them having an FAA medical certificate and they migrate into glider flying....
and despite these known issues they choose to continue soaring.

When the machine makes an unexplainable, observed descent in a seemingly random flight path to impact -- regrettably the local coroner concludes "blunt force trauma" and makes no effort to ascertain what happened "prior" to impact. Coroner's job is done, paperwork filed.
NTSB has a report, case closed.

We do a much better job of analysis within our community, and make that available through the Soaring Safety Foundations reports. Liability concerns for slander or defamation? Every pilot who dies is a 'wonderful' human. I don't intend to attack any individual pilot, but should strive to learn from prior accidents. I have offered a popular presentation at conventions that reviewed fatal accidents. The take-away from those has been -- how could I (you) have replicated or avoided that particular scenario, based on publicly available information.

When we know of local pilots who are flying beyond seemingly rational medical situations, we should personally intervene.
"Hey, I like you too much to see something bad happen. Can I encourage you to fly a two-seater with a safety pilot?" Our insurance pool losses are a concern for all of us.

Sincerely,
Cindy B

[Bob Kuykendall]

On Wednesday, November 20, 2019 at 12:38:33 PM UTC-8, CindyB wrote:
> When the machine makes an unexplainable, observed descent in a seemingly random flight path to impact -- regrettably the local coroner concludes "blunt force trauma" and makes no effort to ascertain what happened "prior" to impact. Coroner's job is done, paperwork filed.
> NTSB has a report, case closed.

Medical issues often present with impaired judgement and cognition of a level well short of debilitating under normal circumstances, but critical in the context of soaring flight. Dehydration and hypoxia are common initiators in the soaring world, but there are also many less common ones including the aforementioned cardiac events.

My personal suspicion is that somewhere around 10% of soaring accidents are the result of these low-level debilitations, where for whatever reason someone considered themselves safe to fly but shouldn't have. What makes them especially hard to diagnose afterwards is that their symptoms are often masked by the shock that typically results from an accident.

--Bob K.

[Ramy[_2_]]

Tom,

Check 2018. I researched a little more about those and personally knew 3 of the victims.

Ramy

[[email protected]]

Bob, I think your hitting the nail on the head. While a fuy may not be experiencing an in-air heart attack, age has a way of dulling the mind and slowing the decision making process, along with the reflexes. As the soaring pilot pool ages, we are most likely seeing and going to see more of age/imparing accidents.

I know in my situation, I have moved my dusting flying from the quite demanding area of E washington/W idaho, down into the flat land of the midwest. The primary reason was to minimize the challenges involved in ag flying. While I started my dusting career in those western hills with numerous very very challenging fields, I was young-slightly dumb, and dodged death fairly easily. Getting older I know for a fact, that I do not have 20 year old reflexes. Flight experience and muscle memory (instinctively knowing what action to take) has probably balanced out the loss. But old age will eventually win. I will give myself another 5 years or so of ag flying and then pull the plug on that type of flying. Not due to not being able to effectively do it, but due to knowing that those challenges require a continual concentration. In addition, I told myself years ago I would stop flying ag the year I find myself thinking about other things while on-swath, and not calculation and reassessing exactly where, in an emergency, I am gonna set her down from any position in the field. A guy has to know instantly what move to make, turn left, right, straight ahead etc. Without total concentration, a guy either does a crappy job of application or worse gets his tail in a crack. This mental concentration has served me well all these years. A guy needs to know when to hang up the spurs.

While imop, soaring is much less demanding except in ridge running, or high speed flying, it still requires a level of concentration beyond that of tooling along in a c-172 at altitude. And that level of concentration needed INCREASES with diminishing altitude! aka getting low over marginal terrain, or in a landing pattern. When a guy starts to find himself not concentrating in those situations, just relying on experience “ I’ve landed this bird a thousand times, no big deal�, that should be a big yellow caution light, telling a guy he needs to re-evaluate his mental abilities.

However, on the other hand, My ag flying buddies think I am already “mental� for flying xc in a glider, and my soaring buddies think the same thing when they see me doing it in one with the glide ratio of a rock.

[Eric Greenwell[_4_]]

wrote on 11/21/2019 4:24 AM:
> However, on the other hand, My ag flying buddies think I am already “mental� for flying xc in a glider, and my soaring buddies think the same thing when they see me doing it in one with the glide ratio of a rock.

I would be much more comfortable flying your "rock" at altitude for hours, than
flying an airplane at a few hundred feet for half the time. I would feel like I
was on short final all the time, without a runway in sight.

--
Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA (change ".netto" to ".us" to email me)
- "A Guide to Self-Launching Sailplane Operation"
https://sites.google.com/site/motorgliders/publications/download-the-guide-1

[BobW]

> I always wonder how many accidents are a result of an in-air medical problem.
Interesting to contemplate, alright, and some verra thoughtful replies
downthread...

Beginning 'way back' (i.e. when I was a wet-behind-the-ears soaring tyro, and
already seriously-interested in 'stuff' like soaring's life-ending risks,
etc.), I began to semi-regularly encounter 'the medical emergency rationale'
discussionally arising. Medical emergencies (and age-related mental
diminutions) are unarguably unavoidable over time (well, except by death, I
mean, sardonic chuckle). What to do about those risks is every pilot's
personal issue.

Not yet mentioned is something that - for me - has long raised a *potential*
red flag about *some* fellow soaring nuts. Without meaning to suggest a strong
correlation between the doubt inherent in the snippet above and any individual
pilot's actual judgment, I've always been reluctant to buy into 'medical
emergency' as my get out of jail free card as a pilot. Sure, medical
emergencies happen, but to exclusionarily dismiss whatever other lessons might
be drawn from this or that fatal accident is - IMHO - a disservice to the Joe
Pilot playing that card.

FWIW...
Bob W.

[2G]

On Wednesday, November 20, 2019 at 8:34:52 PM UTC-8, Ramy wrote:
> Tom,
>
> Check 2018. I researched a little more about those and personally knew 3 of the victims.
>
> Ramy

Ramy,

I reviewed all of the 2018 fatal accidents listed by the NTSB:
https://www.ntsb.gov/_layouts/ntsb.aviation/Results.aspx?queryId=4bdedcbf-910c-4cf4-9b56-ea42dfd47c36

The majority were clearly bad airmanship, but a couple are more curious. Two involved commercial flights that were CFITs (controlled flight into terrain), and totally avoidable. One of the curious ones involved pilots I am sure you knew, the Duo Discus that crashed on Slide Mtn. It did several very tight loops until it broke up. I find it hard to believe that was intentional, so why did it happen? I have never heard of an elevator jamming in the full up position, and the Duo is automatic hookup, so that wasn't the cause.. The only thing that makes sense to me is a medical emergency with the pilot flying, causing him to pull full aft on the stick, but we will probably never know.

The other was an in-flight breakup of an IS29D. This glider was thoroughly inspected by several pilots, one of which was an A&P, who was flying. Did he over-stress the glider, or did it have an undetected flaw? We will have to await a final report for any more information.

A full review of all these accidents is at the SSF website:
https://www.soaringsafety.org/accidentprev/SSF_2018_annual_report.doc

The bottom line is ****-poor airmanship still is THE primary cause of glider fatal accidents.

Tom

[[email protected]]

Regarding chances of having a locked “full up� elevator situation, my brother did experience just that. He was involved in a gaggle midair over Cal City during a regional. He was flying the then new to racing Ventus A model. His elevator was impacted by the wing of the other glider which resulted in having an elevator jamming in full up deflection. His ship did a series of three high speed loops before he was able to kick the canopy away and get out. He was under pretty high g’s as he told me he could barely move and had real limited eyesight. He was lucky to barely have had enough altitude for his chute to open. The ship now sans-pilot continued to loop itself right down to the ground. She landed herself in the sagebrush ending up with a broken tail boom, semi destroyed elevator and crumped control rod/linkages, and dented fuselage but no noticeable wing damage from the pilot-empty landing.

Regarding that duo discus accident, there is a definite mystery there, I do not think they found any control surface related issues in the investigation. but any way you slice it, be it two guys stunting, two guys fighting each other for control, one guy thinking the other guy has control and doing nothing, one guy having a medically related episode, etc, its another example of another needless accident.

[RR]

Tom,this is why I asked for your definition of airmanship. If it is both stick and rudder skills and judgment then all that is left is mechanical failure and hand of god. It makes sence to me that the last two are small contributors. If we asume our skills are superior and will keep us out of trouble, how do we explain the "**** poor airmanship" of highly skilled contest pilots how have been killed. To me is seems to be erosion of margins. Over time we get more bold, get away with it time and time again until it becomes the new normal. In my effort to keep from being a stistic, I try to reset my margins from time to time.

I have known 3 pilots that have hit trees on the ridge. All resulted in minor damage and flew on. 2 of the 3 were excellent pilots, one a world record holder. All fly a little higher off the ridge now. And without hitting a tree, so do I...

[Dan Marotta]

There's a pretty good discussion of airmanship here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airmanship

On 11/24/2019 7:05 AM, RR wrote:
> Tom,this is why I asked for your definition of airmanship. If it is both stick and rudder skills and judgment then all that is left is mechanical failure and hand of god. It makes sence to me that the last two are small contributors. If we asume our skills are superior and will keep us out of trouble, how do we explain the "**** poor airmanship" of highly skilled contest pilots how have been killed. To me is seems to be erosion of margins. Over time we get more bold, get away with it time and time again until it becomes the new normal. In my effort to keep from being a stistic, I try to reset my margins from time to time.
>
> I have known 3 pilots that have hit trees on the ridge. All resulted in minor damage and flew on. 2 of the 3 were excellent pilots, one a world record holder. All fly a little higher off the ridge now. And without hitting a tree, so do I...

--
Dan, 5J

[2G]

On Sunday, November 24, 2019 at 6:05:37 AM UTC-8, RR wrote:
> Tom,this is why I asked for your definition of airmanship. If it is both stick and rudder skills and judgment then all that is left is mechanical failure and hand of god. It makes sence to me that the last two are small contributors. If we asume our skills are superior and will keep us out of trouble, how do we explain the "**** poor airmanship" of highly skilled contest pilots how have been killed. To me is seems to be erosion of margins. Over time we get more bold, get away with it time and time again until it becomes the new normal. In my effort to keep from being a stistic, I try to reset my margins from time to time.
>
> I have known 3 pilots that have hit trees on the ridge. All resulted in minor damage and flew on. 2 of the 3 were excellent pilots, one a world record holder. All fly a little higher off the ridge now. And without hitting a tree, so do I...

RR,

Being a highly skilled contest pilot does not make you immune from a momentary lapse, and that is all that it takes if it happens at exactly the wrong time. Flying too close to the trees on a ridge and hitting them is also known as a CFIT, and CFIT is likely the best example of ****-poor airmanship as it is totally preventable.

I am not a holier than thou type - it's happened to me, but I was lucky enough to have survived, twice. One was when I failed to hookup my elevator on an ASW19, the other where I botched the engine restart of a DG400 and landed in a plowed field with the engine extended.

In general, I fly with pretty wide safety margins, especially concerning weather. Thunderstorms are a very real possibility where I do most of my flying, and airports are few and far between. So the decision to fly or not is critical. I regularly repeat a very simple axiom to fellow pilots, "I would rather be down here wishing I was up there, than be up there wishing I was down here."

Tom

[[email protected]]

On Sunday, November 24, 2019 at 9:05:37 AM UTC-5, RR wrote:
> Tom,this is why I asked for your definition of airmanship. If it is both stick and rudder skills and judgment then all that is left is mechanical failure and hand of god. It makes sence to me that the last two are small contributors. If we asume our skills are superior and will keep us out of trouble, how do we explain the "**** poor airmanship" of highly skilled contest pilots how have been killed. To me is seems to be erosion of margins. Over time we get more bold, get away with it time and time again until it becomes the new normal. In my effort to keep from being a stistic, I try to reset my margins from time to time.
>
> I have known 3 pilots that have hit trees on the ridge. All resulted in minor damage and flew on. 2 of the 3 were excellent pilots, one a world record holder. All fly a little higher off the ridge now. And without hitting a tree, so do I...

Not about Soaring but relevant safety talk to RR's point of resetting normal margins. Language NSFW. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2O-Dpw0Yfc&t=674s

[Ramy[_2_]]

Tom, indeed the curious ones in which we don’t understand how those accidents could have happen to experience pilots are the ones I referred to.
I don’t think you can call those poor airmanship. I think many accidents are due to “momentarily laps of judgment� due to “tunnel vision� which is a human flaw and not necessarily poor airmanship. I am afraid we will continue having similar accidents statistics no matter what we do since we are humans participating in an unforgiving activity.

Ramy

[Tango Eight]

On Wednesday, November 27, 2019 at 2:39:57 AM UTC-5, Ramy wrote:
> Tom, indeed the curious ones in which we don’t understand how those accidents could have happen to experience pilots are the ones I referred to.
> I don’t think you can call those poor airmanship. I think many accidents are due to “momentarily laps of judgment� due to “tunnel vision� which is a human flaw and not necessarily poor airmanship. I am afraid we will continue having similar accidents statistics no matter what we do since we are humans participating in an unforgiving activity.
>
> Ramy

What about tunnel vision or "momentary lapses of judgement" >isn't< poor airmanship?

T8

[Dave Nadler]

On Wednesday, November 27, 2019 at 8:07:07 AM UTC-5, Tango Eight wrote:
> What about tunnel vision or "momentary lapses of judgement" >isn't< poor airmanship?

Only someone else would exhibit "Poor Airmanship".
"A momentary lapse" or "Tunnel vision", not so much...

Be careful out there,
Best Regards, Dave

[Andy Blackburn[_3_]]

I'm with Eric.

"Poor airmanship" can pretty nearly be defined as being the PIC of an airplane that crashes - which isn't super helpful. The question I ask myself is: are any of us such great pilots with such impeccable airmanship that we are practically immune from accident - or even at significantly lower risk? We all like to tell ourselves we are good enough pilots not to make a fatal error but obviously some of us end up dead wrong.

I pretty regularly hear assessments of poor flying or poor decision-making following accidents of all kinds, but particularly those with fatalities. Since these accidents are only in the rarest of instances associated with pilots about whom I've also heard "that guy is going to kill himself one day" I can only conclude that we are terrible at predicting who suffers from chronic "poor airmanship" of sufficient severity to kill themself - and we are particularly bad at predicting this for ourselves the ones who end up dead wouldn't fly. So we tend to rationalize about accidents and how we wouldn't do such stupid things and it was all oh so easy to avoid. If hindsight is 20/20, hindsight about someone else's accident is 20/10.

Do I think accidents are totally random and there's nothing that any of us can do about it? No. I wouldn't get in the cockpit, close the canopy and launch if that were the case. But, I do believe there are a significant number of cases where circumstances overwhelm what 99.9 times out of 100 would be an uneventful flight or flying maneuver.

Yes, if you never thermal below 1,500' AGL, never get out of 25:1 gliding range of an airport, never fly slower than 65 knots and never bank more than 30 degrees you might reduce your risk, but not to zero by any stretch and you will likely sacrifice other flying goals in the process, so you shave a little bit here or there while still trying to be careful and safe. Then you end up is a situation where the options aren't what you'd prefer and you have to choose (simple one - land at this airport and call for a retrieve or head to that cu and risk a field landing but if it works you get the altitude you need to get home). So you choose and things can get better or they can get worse. Then you choose again, and again.

We like to think there are absolute limits and rules we can fly by to stay safe, but those are all built on a presumption of predictability - and prediction is a probabilistic exercise. Rule and procedures take you only so far. We all choose where in the probability distribution we think we are flying, but we don't really know because our accumulated experience is insufficient to know exactly where 100% safe is - and if you fly enough you only need to find the 0.01% likely really bad outcome. I know a number of highly skilled pilots with excellent airmanship who through a series of decisions that had unexpected outcomes found the 0.01% - a sequence of events that ultimately exceeded their abundant airmanship skills - in some cases only for a fraction of a distracted moment.

If everything were simple and predictable and seemingly low risk decisions didn't occasionally tend to compound in the worst possible ways, we could all just take a training flight, learn the secret of flawless airmanship and accidents would mostly be a thing of a past. I think we all know it's not so simple, which is why so many of us hunger to learn precisely what happened in each accident - what accumulation of tolerances in the wrong direction cost someone their glider or their life - so we can get a better sense of where the 0.01% is.

Andy Blackburn
9B


On Wednesday, November 27, 2019 at 11:16:46 AM UTC-8, Eric Greenwell wrote:
> I think "poor airmanship" is such a broad term, it tells us nothing useful.
> Perhaps the term "pilot error" is more specific and useful, particularly when
> talking about pilots that clearly are good airman, yet have an accident. It gives
> you a specific reason that you can avoid or learn to control. I think Ramy is
> pointing out what we all know: all pilots make errors, and it is the margins we
> use that determine the consequences of the error.
>
> Somewhere near the start of this thread, it was posited that margins can erode
> over time for a number reasons, and previously safe pilot becomes, unknowingly, an
> unsafe pilot.
>
> --
> Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA (change ".netto" to ".us" to email me)
> - "A Guide to Self-Launching Sailplane Operation"
> https://sites.google.com/site/motorgliders/publications/download-the-guide-1

[2G]

On Tuesday, November 26, 2019 at 11:39:57 PM UTC-8, Ramy wrote:
> Tom, indeed the curious ones in which we don’t understand how those accidents could have happen to experience pilots are the ones I referred to.
> I don’t think you can call those poor airmanship. I think many accidents are due to “momentarily laps of judgment� due to “tunnel vision� which is a human flaw and not necessarily poor airmanship. I am afraid we will continue having similar accidents statistics no matter what we do since we are humans participating in an unforgiving activity.
>
> Ramy

Ramy,

If you don't understand how they happened then you can't say what WASN'T involved. Nonetheless, the majority of the accidents were poor airmanship - the others MIGHT have been, we just don't know either way.

Tom

[2G]

On Wednesday, November 27, 2019 at 11:16:46 AM UTC-8, Eric Greenwell wrote:
> Dave Nadler wrote on 11/27/2019 6:16 AM:
> > On Wednesday, November 27, 2019 at 8:07:07 AM UTC-5, Tango Eight wrote:
> >> What about tunnel vision or "momentary lapses of judgement" >isn't< poor airmanship?
> >
> > Only someone else would exhibit "Poor Airmanship".
> > "A momentary lapse" or "Tunnel vision", not so much...
> >
> > Be careful out there,
> > Best Regards, Dave
> >
> I think "poor airmanship" is such a broad term, it tells us nothing useful.
> Perhaps the term "pilot error" is more specific and useful, particularly when
> talking about pilots that clearly are good airman, yet have an accident. It gives
> you a specific reason that you can avoid or learn to control. I think Ramy is
> pointing out what we all know: all pilots make errors, and it is the margins we
> use that determine the consequences of the error.
>
> Somewhere near the start of this thread, it was posited that margins can erode
> over time for a number reasons, and previously safe pilot becomes, unknowingly, an
> unsafe pilot.
>
> --
> Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA (change ".netto" to ".us" to email me)
> - "A Guide to Self-Launching Sailplane Operation"
> https://sites.google.com/site/motorgliders/publications/download-the-guide-1

"Pilot error" simply refers to the pilotage portion of airmanship. The whole idea of quoting statistics is to imply that these events are random and out of your control, which couldn't be further from the truth. My advice is if you apply good airmanship you are unlikely to become one of these statistics. For example, there IS NO reason for anyone to stall/spin turning final. This is good news.

Tom

[2G]

On Wednesday, November 27, 2019 at 1:24:23 PM UTC-8, Andy Blackburn wrote:
> I'm with Eric.
>
> "Poor airmanship" can pretty nearly be defined as being the PIC of an airplane that crashes - which isn't super helpful. The question I ask myself is: are any of us such great pilots with such impeccable airmanship that we are practically immune from accident - or even at significantly lower risk? We all like to tell ourselves we are good enough pilots not to make a fatal error but obviously some of us end up dead wrong.
>
> I pretty regularly hear assessments of poor flying or poor decision-making following accidents of all kinds, but particularly those with fatalities. Since these accidents are only in the rarest of instances associated with pilots about whom I've also heard "that guy is going to kill himself one day" I can only conclude that we are terrible at predicting who suffers from chronic "poor airmanship" of sufficient severity to kill themself - and we are particularly bad at predicting this for ourselves the ones who end up dead wouldn't fly. So we tend to rationalize about accidents and how we wouldn't do such stupid things and it was all oh so easy to avoid. If hindsight is 20/20, hindsight about someone else's accident is 20/10.
>
> Do I think accidents are totally random and there's nothing that any of us can do about it? No. I wouldn't get in the cockpit, close the canopy and launch if that were the case. But, I do believe there are a significant number of cases where circumstances overwhelm what 99.9 times out of 100 would be an uneventful flight or flying maneuver.
>
> Yes, if you never thermal below 1,500' AGL, never get out of 25:1 gliding range of an airport, never fly slower than 65 knots and never bank more than 30 degrees you might reduce your risk, but not to zero by any stretch and you will likely sacrifice other flying goals in the process, so you shave a little bit here or there while still trying to be careful and safe. Then you end up is a situation where the options aren't what you'd prefer and you have to choose (simple one - land at this airport and call for a retrieve or head to that cu and risk a field landing but if it works you get the altitude you need to get home). So you choose and things can get better or they can get worse. Then you choose again, and again.
>
> We like to think there are absolute limits and rules we can fly by to stay safe, but those are all built on a presumption of predictability - and prediction is a probabilistic exercise. Rule and procedures take you only so far. We all choose where in the probability distribution we think we are flying, but we don't really know because our accumulated experience is insufficient to know exactly where 100% safe is - and if you fly enough you only need to find the 0.01% likely really bad outcome. I know a number of highly skilled pilots with excellent airmanship who through a series of decisions that had unexpected outcomes found the 0.01% - a sequence of events that ultimately exceeded their abundant airmanship skills - in some cases only for a fraction of a distracted moment.
>
> If everything were simple and predictable and seemingly low risk decisions didn't occasionally tend to compound in the worst possible ways, we could all just take a training flight, learn the secret of flawless airmanship and accidents would mostly be a thing of a past. I think we all know it's not so simple, which is why so many of us hunger to learn precisely what happened in each accident - what accumulation of tolerances in the wrong direction cost someone their glider or their life - so we can get a better sense of where the 0.01% is.
>
> Andy Blackburn
> 9B
>
>
> On Wednesday, November 27, 2019 at 11:16:46 AM UTC-8, Eric Greenwell wrote:
> > I think "poor airmanship" is such a broad term, it tells us nothing useful.
> > Perhaps the term "pilot error" is more specific and useful, particularly when
> > talking about pilots that clearly are good airman, yet have an accident.. It gives
> > you a specific reason that you can avoid or learn to control. I think Ramy is
> > pointing out what we all know: all pilots make errors, and it is the margins we
> > use that determine the consequences of the error.
> >
> > Somewhere near the start of this thread, it was posited that margins can erode
> > over time for a number reasons, and previously safe pilot becomes, unknowingly, an
> > unsafe pilot.
> >
> > --
> > Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA (change ".netto" to ".us" to email me)
> > - "A Guide to Self-Launching Sailplane Operation"
> > https://sites.google.com/site/motorgliders/publications/download-the-guide-1

Andy,

I recommend that you do what I did: review ALL of the fatal glider accidents for the last two years and get back to me. Hint: those accidents did not fall into the 0.01% category.

Tom

[[email protected]]

I wonder if wing suit pilots try to convince themselves that their excellent airmanship skills will keep them alive as contrasted to their careless deceased companions.
Not equivalent risks, I know, but you get the point.
Objective data are seldom available for fatal accidents leaving us free to put our own spin on the probable causes. Like many high time racing and cross country pilots , l have lost upwards of 20 friends or acquaintances to glider accidents. I can think of only 2 that I suspected the pilot involved was “ an accident waiting to happen�.
One death for every 50,000 hours is an acceptable risk for me.
I try to be careful and current but I think I’m mostly lucky.
Dale Bush

[Ramy[_2_]]

Andy said exactly what I mean and summarized my thought on the subject better than I can. There is nothing I can add to what Andy said to better explain my philosophy of why and how accidents happen.

Ramy

[Ramy[_2_]]

Also, as Dale said. I also think I am probably mostly lucky.

Ramy

[Andy Blackburn[_3_]]

On Wednesday, November 27, 2019 at 6:07:47 PM UTC-8, 2G wrote:

I did - 20 years worth. Read every last one of the fatals and a lot of the major damage ones as part of an article I wrote for Soaring. I can give you a full statistical rundown as well - by phase of flight, type of glider, region of the country, contest/XC flight vs local, etc.

I think you mis-understood me. A pilot makes hundreds to thousands of in-flight maneuvers every flight hour. Almost all of them executed without incident. Many of them are made based on presumptions about what the airmass, pilot workload, traffic situation, aircraft response and physical/mental capabilities of the pilot are likely to be over the next N seconds. Most of the time the consequences of being a bit wrong on where you are in the probability distribution of all of the above doesn't matter, but sometimes it does.. You can attempt to move where you are in the probability distribution of unexpected bad things by increasing your margins, but it's not a panacea.

I would speculate that many of the stall/spin accidents I've seen in the mountains had a fair amount to do with the airmass not doing what the pilot expected. You can say - well, don't fly in the mountains! I think that's not especially helpful. An awful lot of final glides gone bad are the result of persistent sink that exceeded the pilot expectation plus whatever buffer he had. I personally interviewed a number of midair-involved pilots and I can tell you that even with a very good scan your odds of picking up an aircraft on a collision course (particularly if it's head-to-head) is about 50/50. Your fovea just isn't big enough for the closing velocities of aircraft.. The Air Force, NASA and various air safety bodies around the world have studied it to death and that's the rough number they come up with. That's one reason we have Flarm - you can't train yourself to have a bigger fovea.

You can call all of that poor airmanship if you want, but I think you're whistling past the graveyard a bit.

Andy

> Andy,
>
> I recommend that you do what I did: review ALL of the fatal glider accidents for the last two years and get back to me. Hint: those accidents did not fall into the 0.01% category.
>
> Tom

[Eric Greenwell[_4_]]

2G wrote on 11/27/2019 6:02 PM:
> On Wednesday, November 27, 2019 at 11:16:46 AM UTC-8, Eric Greenwell wrote:
>> Dave Nadler wrote on 11/27/2019 6:16 AM:
>>> On Wednesday, November 27, 2019 at 8:07:07 AM UTC-5, Tango Eight wrote:
>>>> What about tunnel vision or "momentary lapses of judgement" >isn't< poor airmanship?
>>>
>>> Only someone else would exhibit "Poor Airmanship".
>>> "A momentary lapse" or "Tunnel vision", not so much...
>>>
>>> Be careful out there,
>>> Best Regards, Dave
>>>
>> I think "poor airmanship" is such a broad term, it tells us nothing useful.
>> Perhaps the term "pilot error" is more specific and useful, particularly when
>> talking about pilots that clearly are good airman, yet have an accident. It gives
>> you a specific reason that you can avoid or learn to control. I think Ramy is
>> pointing out what we all know: all pilots make errors, and it is the margins we
>> use that determine the consequences of the error.
>>
>> Somewhere near the start of this thread, it was posited that margins can erode
>> over time for a number reasons, and previously safe pilot becomes, unknowingly, an
>> unsafe pilot.
>
> "Pilot error" simply refers to the pilotage portion of airmanship. The whole idea of quoting statistics is to imply that these events are random and out of your control, which couldn't be further from the truth. My advice is if you apply good airmanship you are unlikely to become one of these statistics. For example, there IS NO reason for anyone to stall/spin turning final. This is good news.

I'm not sure what you mean by "pilotage", which generally refers to navigation. I
use "pilot error" more broadly than that; eg, I include misreading a weather
forecast, mistuning a radio, entering the wrong airport ID in the GPS,
over-ruddering in a turn, and generally any mistake the pilot makes during the
preparation for and the flight itself.


--
Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA (change ".netto" to ".us" to email me)
- "A Guide to Self-Launching Sailplane Operation"
https://sites.google.com/site/motorgliders/publications/download-the-guide-1

[Jonathan St. Cloud]

On Thursday, November 28, 2019 at 9:49:10 AM UTC-8, Andy Blackburn wrote:
> On Wednesday, November 27, 2019 at 6:07:47 PM UTC-8, 2G wrote:
>
> I did - 20 years worth. Read every last one of the fatals and a lot of the major damage ones as part of an article I wrote for Soaring. I can give you a full statistical rundown as well - by phase of flight, type of glider, region of the country, contest/XC flight vs local, etc.
>
> I think you mis-understood me. A pilot makes hundreds to thousands of in-flight maneuvers every flight hour. Almost all of them executed without incident. Many of them are made based on presumptions about what the airmass, pilot workload, traffic situation, aircraft response and physical/mental capabilities of the pilot are likely to be over the next N seconds. Most of the time the consequences of being a bit wrong on where you are in the probability distribution of all of the above doesn't matter, but sometimes it does. You can attempt to move where you are in the probability distribution of unexpected bad things by increasing your margins, but it's not a panacea.
>
> I would speculate that many of the stall/spin accidents I've seen in the mountains had a fair amount to do with the airmass not doing what the pilot expected. You can say - well, don't fly in the mountains! I think that's not especially helpful. An awful lot of final glides gone bad are the result of persistent sink that exceeded the pilot expectation plus whatever buffer he had. I personally interviewed a number of midair-involved pilots and I can tell you that even with a very good scan your odds of picking up an aircraft on a collision course (particularly if it's head-to-head) is about 50/50. Your fovea just isn't big enough for the closing velocities of aircraft. The Air Force, NASA and various air safety bodies around the world have studied it to death and that's the rough number they come up with. That's one reason we have Flarm - you can't train yourself to have a bigger fovea.
>
> You can call all of that poor airmanship if you want, but I think you're whistling past the graveyard a bit.
>
> Andy
>
> > Andy,
> >
> > I recommend that you do what I did: review ALL of the fatal glider accidents for the last two years and get back to me. Hint: those accidents did not fall into the 0.01% category.
> >
> > Tom

The air in which we fly is not uniform, sometimes not even honest. Peter Masak, was a great pilot. He met fate flying in an area and conditions he was familiar with. While I did not view his GPS trace I did speak with a pilot whom did. Nothing unusual noted in the GPS. You can stall at any speed and any attitude. We have seen this in the Sierra's. Andy's right on about the stall/spin accidents, sometimes there are other factors. One of the things I worked with a XC student I had was noticing and calling out changes in airmass. Sailors are particularly attuned to this.

[Branko Stojkovic]

On Thursday, November 28, 2019 at 11:57:58 AM UTC-8, Jonathan St. Cloud wrote:
> The air in which we fly is not uniform, sometimes not even honest. Peter Masak, was a great pilot. He met fate flying in an area and conditions he was familiar with. While I did not view his GPS trace I did speak with a pilot whom did. Nothing unusual noted in the GPS.

Yes, ridge/mountain flying presents increased risk compared to flying in the flat lands. I personally take the following precautions in order to minimize the additional risk associated with mountain flying:

I fly a short winged glider in the mountains (12.6m span).

I fly with an instrument that calculates wind speed and direction in near real time (LX 9000).

I apply good airmanship when ridge flying, by maintaining generous margins in airspeed and distance from the ridge.

I only fly competitions in flat lands.

Branko XYU

[Dave Walsh[_2_]]

At 21:12 28 November 2019, Branko Stojkovic wrote:
>On Thursday, November 28, 2019 at 11:57:58 AM UTC-8,
Jonathan St. Cloud
>wro=
>te:
>> The air in which we fly is not uniform, sometimes not even
honest. Peter
>=
>Masak, was a great pilot. He met fate flying in an area and
conditions he
>=
>was familiar with. While I did not view his GPS trace I did
speak with a
>p=
>ilot whom did. Nothing unusual noted in the GPS.
>
>Yes, ridge/mountain flying presents increased risk compared to
flying in
>th=
>e flat lands. I personally take the following precautions in order
to
>minim=
>ize the additional risk associated with mountain flying:
>
>I fly a short winged glider in the mountains (12.6m span).
>
>I fly with an instrument that calculates wind speed and
direction in near
>r=
>eal time (LX 9000).
>
>I apply good airmanship when ridge flying, by maintaining
generous margins
>=
>in airspeed and distance from the ridge.
>
>I only fly competitions in flat lands.
>
>Branko XYU
>
Yes, interesting approach to mountain flying. However a 12.6m
wingspan (low performance) is going to mean you spend a LOT
more time down near the rocks than if you were in an 18m ship?
It's been suggested that European Alpine statistics show that
15m ships have a worse accident rate than 25m ships? I don't
know how these figures were generated: there are a lot more
15/18m ships flying than 25+m ships; is the analysis based on
Alpine hours flown? For sure it's dangerous; just look at where
most French glider pilots die: the Alps.
Dave Walsh
>

[Jonathan St. Cloud]

On Thursday, November 28, 2019 at 1:12:43 PM UTC-8, Branko Stojkovic wrote:
> On Thursday, November 28, 2019 at 11:57:58 AM UTC-8, Jonathan St. Cloud wrote:
> > The air in which we fly is not uniform, sometimes not even honest. Peter Masak, was a great pilot. He met fate flying in an area and conditions he was familiar with. While I did not view his GPS trace I did speak with a pilot whom did. Nothing unusual noted in the GPS.
>
> Yes, ridge/mountain flying presents increased risk compared to flying in the flat lands. I personally take the following precautions in order to minimize the additional risk associated with mountain flying:
>
> I fly a short winged glider in the mountains (12.6m span).
>
> I fly with an instrument that calculates wind speed and direction in near real time (LX 9000).
>
> I apply good airmanship when ridge flying, by maintaining generous margins in airspeed and distance from the ridge.
>
> I only fly competitions in flat lands.
>
> Branko XYU

Flat lands would be more dangerous for me as 99.9 % of my flying has been in the mountains , much of that in a 26.5 meter glider. Therein lays one of the issues when trying to quantify how safe this sport is. To me it is safe enough to want to do it as often as the daily struggles of life permit.

[Dan Marotta]

Saying that someone who crashed because he experienced unexpected
conditions (wind, sink, thunderstorms, etc.) is the definition of poor
airmanship.Â* Quote all the statistics you want - I'd venture that the
statistics were generated by pilots who didn't pay attention to the
weather ahead or back at the home field, who tried too long to find that
saving thermal and then couldn't reach a suitable field, who neglected
to hook up one or more of the controls, who didn't drink enough water,
who depended too much on electronics to keep them safe, etc.

Now I'm not saying that electronics aren't of value, only that over
reliance on them exhibits poor airmanship, as is blaming the weather,
field conditions, etc.Â* As the pilot in command, you are the only one
responsible for the safe conduct of the flight.Â* Take responsibility for
your actions (or lack thereof).


On 11/28/2019 10:49 AM, Andy Blackburn wrote:
> On Wednesday, November 27, 2019 at 6:07:47 PM UTC-8, 2G wrote:
>
> I did - 20 years worth. Read every last one of the fatals and a lot of the major damage ones as part of an article I wrote for Soaring. I can give you a full statistical rundown as well - by phase of flight, type of glider, region of the country, contest/XC flight vs local, etc.
>
> I think you mis-understood me. A pilot makes hundreds to thousands of in-flight maneuvers every flight hour. Almost all of them executed without incident. Many of them are made based on presumptions about what the airmass, pilot workload, traffic situation, aircraft response and physical/mental capabilities of the pilot are likely to be over the next N seconds. Most of the time the consequences of being a bit wrong on where you are in the probability distribution of all of the above doesn't matter, but sometimes it does. You can attempt to move where you are in the probability distribution of unexpected bad things by increasing your margins, but it's not a panacea.
>
> I would speculate that many of the stall/spin accidents I've seen in the mountains had a fair amount to do with the airmass not doing what the pilot expected. You can say - well, don't fly in the mountains! I think that's not especially helpful. An awful lot of final glides gone bad are the result of persistent sink that exceeded the pilot expectation plus whatever buffer he had. I personally interviewed a number of midair-involved pilots and I can tell you that even with a very good scan your odds of picking up an aircraft on a collision course (particularly if it's head-to-head) is about 50/50. Your fovea just isn't big enough for the closing velocities of aircraft. The Air Force, NASA and various air safety bodies around the world have studied it to death and that's the rough number they come up with. That's one reason we have Flarm - you can't train yourself to have a bigger fovea.
>
> You can call all of that poor airmanship if you want, but I think you're whistling past the graveyard a bit.
>
> Andy
>
>> Andy,
>>
>> I recommend that you do what I did: review ALL of the fatal glider accidents for the last two years and get back to me. Hint: those accidents did not fall into the 0.01% category.
>>
>> Tom

--
Dan, 5J

[2G]

On Thursday, November 28, 2019 at 9:49:10 AM UTC-8, Andy Blackburn wrote:
> On Wednesday, November 27, 2019 at 6:07:47 PM UTC-8, 2G wrote:
>
> I did - 20 years worth. Read every last one of the fatals and a lot of the major damage ones as part of an article I wrote for Soaring. I can give you a full statistical rundown as well - by phase of flight, type of glider, region of the country, contest/XC flight vs local, etc.
>
> I think you mis-understood me. A pilot makes hundreds to thousands of in-flight maneuvers every flight hour. Almost all of them executed without incident. Many of them are made based on presumptions about what the airmass, pilot workload, traffic situation, aircraft response and physical/mental capabilities of the pilot are likely to be over the next N seconds. Most of the time the consequences of being a bit wrong on where you are in the probability distribution of all of the above doesn't matter, but sometimes it does. You can attempt to move where you are in the probability distribution of unexpected bad things by increasing your margins, but it's not a panacea.
>
> I would speculate that many of the stall/spin accidents I've seen in the mountains had a fair amount to do with the airmass not doing what the pilot expected. You can say - well, don't fly in the mountains! I think that's not especially helpful. An awful lot of final glides gone bad are the result of persistent sink that exceeded the pilot expectation plus whatever buffer he had. I personally interviewed a number of midair-involved pilots and I can tell you that even with a very good scan your odds of picking up an aircraft on a collision course (particularly if it's head-to-head) is about 50/50. Your fovea just isn't big enough for the closing velocities of aircraft. The Air Force, NASA and various air safety bodies around the world have studied it to death and that's the rough number they come up with. That's one reason we have Flarm - you can't train yourself to have a bigger fovea.
>
> You can call all of that poor airmanship if you want, but I think you're whistling past the graveyard a bit.
>
> Andy
>
> > Andy,
> >
> > I recommend that you do what I did: review ALL of the fatal glider accidents for the last two years and get back to me. Hint: those accidents did not fall into the 0.01% category.
> >
> > Tom

Andy,

What I call "poor airmanship" are the majority of the fatal accidents in the last two years (I have not gone further than that). I was with you right up to the "whistling" comment; I am only being realistic about what I read in the accident reports. When you stall/spin in the pattern, you are CLEARLY exhibiting sub-standard airmanship. Certainly you agree with that. The air mass can do some unpredictable things, and I have seen accidents that resulted from that. These are the minority of the accidents. I personally witnessed a stall/incipient spin in the pattern (he survived) and advised the pilot that his skills were sub-standard. He sold his glider and gave up the sport - perhaps I saved his life.

I honestly don't understand the rational here. It seems that the majority of you think you are alive only by luck! I can assure you that that isn't the case. You can't train a pilot to be lucky, only skilled. When someone once told me that I was lucky in life, I replied "I make my own luck."

Tom

[2G]

On Thursday, November 28, 2019 at 11:57:58 AM UTC-8, Jonathan St. Cloud wrote:
> On Thursday, November 28, 2019 at 9:49:10 AM UTC-8, Andy Blackburn wrote:
> > On Wednesday, November 27, 2019 at 6:07:47 PM UTC-8, 2G wrote:
> >
> > I did - 20 years worth. Read every last one of the fatals and a lot of the major damage ones as part of an article I wrote for Soaring. I can give you a full statistical rundown as well - by phase of flight, type of glider, region of the country, contest/XC flight vs local, etc.
> >
> > I think you mis-understood me. A pilot makes hundreds to thousands of in-flight maneuvers every flight hour. Almost all of them executed without incident. Many of them are made based on presumptions about what the airmass, pilot workload, traffic situation, aircraft response and physical/mental capabilities of the pilot are likely to be over the next N seconds. Most of the time the consequences of being a bit wrong on where you are in the probability distribution of all of the above doesn't matter, but sometimes it does. You can attempt to move where you are in the probability distribution of unexpected bad things by increasing your margins, but it's not a panacea.
> >
> > I would speculate that many of the stall/spin accidents I've seen in the mountains had a fair amount to do with the airmass not doing what the pilot expected. You can say - well, don't fly in the mountains! I think that's not especially helpful. An awful lot of final glides gone bad are the result of persistent sink that exceeded the pilot expectation plus whatever buffer he had. I personally interviewed a number of midair-involved pilots and I can tell you that even with a very good scan your odds of picking up an aircraft on a collision course (particularly if it's head-to-head) is about 50/50. Your fovea just isn't big enough for the closing velocities of aircraft. The Air Force, NASA and various air safety bodies around the world have studied it to death and that's the rough number they come up with. That's one reason we have Flarm - you can't train yourself to have a bigger fovea.
> >
> > You can call all of that poor airmanship if you want, but I think you're whistling past the graveyard a bit.
> >
> > Andy
> >
> > > Andy,
> > >
> > > I recommend that you do what I did: review ALL of the fatal glider accidents for the last two years and get back to me. Hint: those accidents did not fall into the 0.01% category.
> > >
> > > Tom
>
> The air in which we fly is not uniform, sometimes not even honest. Peter Masak, was a great pilot. He met fate flying in an area and conditions he was familiar with. While I did not view his GPS trace I did speak with a pilot whom did. Nothing unusual noted in the GPS. You can stall at any speed and any attitude. We have seen this in the Sierra's. Andy's right on about the stall/spin accidents, sometimes there are other factors. One of the things I worked with a XC student I had was noticing and calling out changes in airmass. Sailors are particularly attuned to this.

Masak's accident was a CFIT, the most avoidable of all accidents. This occurred in a contest when he was trying to clear a ridge with a suitable landing field within reach. Every other pilot in the contest did not attempt this. Bottom line: there IS NO contest worth dying over; after all, we are not at war.
https://app.ntsb.gov/pdfgenerator/ReportGeneratorFile.ashx?EventID=20040604X00737&AKey=1&RType=Final&IType=LA

Tom

[[email protected]]

“I make my own luck�. I like that, I think I will use that line on my wife the next time a friend dies in a glider accident.

[Eric Greenwell[_4_]]

2G wrote on 11/28/2019 4:50 PM:
> When someone once told me that I was lucky in life, I replied "I make my own luck."

This is, I think, an example of thinking that can lead to an erosion of margins.
If you soar, you are exposed to things like weather and other pilots that you do
not completely control. I think "stuff happens" and the best I can do is adjust my
margins so that my skill can cope with bad stuff.

--
Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA (change ".netto" to ".us" to email me)
- "A Guide to Self-Launching Sailplane Operation"
https://sites.google.com/site/motorgliders/publications/download-the-guide-1

[2G]

On Thursday, November 28, 2019 at 6:51:36 PM UTC-8, wrote:
> “I make my own luck�. I like that, I think I will use that line on my wife the next time a friend dies in a glider accident.

You better credit me if you do.

[2G]

On Thursday, November 28, 2019 at 7:23:16 PM UTC-8, Eric Greenwell wrote:
> 2G wrote on 11/28/2019 4:50 PM:
> > When someone once told me that I was lucky in life, I replied "I make my own luck."
>
> This is, I think, an example of thinking that can lead to an erosion of margins.
> If you soar, you are exposed to things like weather and other pilots that you do
> not completely control. I think "stuff happens" and the best I can do is adjust my
> margins so that my skill can cope with bad stuff.
>
> --
> Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA (change ".netto" to ".us" to email me)
> - "A Guide to Self-Launching Sailplane Operation"
> https://sites.google.com/site/motorgliders/publications/download-the-guide-1

Hardly, what it means is that you are proactively, instead of passively, involved in all things that effect your life and business. So, this means INCREASING your margins on glide calculations, or NOT flying in iffy weather, rather than depending upon "luck" to get you thru as Masak did. The entire point is NOT depending upon "luck" which is a euphemism for ****-poor planning. You can't control everything that is happening around you, but you can as best prepared as humanly possible.

Tom

[Jonathan St. Cloud]

On Thursday, November 28, 2019 at 5:31:30 PM UTC-8, 2G wrote:
> On Thursday, November 28, 2019 at 11:57:58 AM UTC-8, Jonathan St. Cloud wrote:
> > On Thursday, November 28, 2019 at 9:49:10 AM UTC-8, Andy Blackburn wrote:
> > > On Wednesday, November 27, 2019 at 6:07:47 PM UTC-8, 2G wrote:
> > >
> > > I did - 20 years worth. Read every last one of the fatals and a lot of the major damage ones as part of an article I wrote for Soaring. I can give you a full statistical rundown as well - by phase of flight, type of glider, region of the country, contest/XC flight vs local, etc.
> > >
> > > I think you mis-understood me. A pilot makes hundreds to thousands of in-flight maneuvers every flight hour. Almost all of them executed without incident. Many of them are made based on presumptions about what the airmass, pilot workload, traffic situation, aircraft response and physical/mental capabilities of the pilot are likely to be over the next N seconds. Most of the time the consequences of being a bit wrong on where you are in the probability distribution of all of the above doesn't matter, but sometimes it does. You can attempt to move where you are in the probability distribution of unexpected bad things by increasing your margins, but it's not a panacea.
> > >
> > > I would speculate that many of the stall/spin accidents I've seen in the mountains had a fair amount to do with the airmass not doing what the pilot expected. You can say - well, don't fly in the mountains! I think that's not especially helpful. An awful lot of final glides gone bad are the result of persistent sink that exceeded the pilot expectation plus whatever buffer he had. I personally interviewed a number of midair-involved pilots and I can tell you that even with a very good scan your odds of picking up an aircraft on a collision course (particularly if it's head-to-head) is about 50/50. Your fovea just isn't big enough for the closing velocities of aircraft. The Air Force, NASA and various air safety bodies around the world have studied it to death and that's the rough number they come up with. That's one reason we have Flarm - you can't train yourself to have a bigger fovea.
> > >
> > > You can call all of that poor airmanship if you want, but I think you're whistling past the graveyard a bit.
> > >
> > > Andy
> > >
> > > > Andy,
> > > >
> > > > I recommend that you do what I did: review ALL of the fatal glider accidents for the last two years and get back to me. Hint: those accidents did not fall into the 0.01% category.
> > > >
> > > > Tom
> >
> > The air in which we fly is not uniform, sometimes not even honest. Peter Masak, was a great pilot. He met fate flying in an area and conditions he was familiar with. While I did not view his GPS trace I did speak with a pilot whom did. Nothing unusual noted in the GPS. You can stall at any speed and any attitude. We have seen this in the Sierra's. Andy's right on about the stall/spin accidents, sometimes there are other factors. One of the things I worked with a XC student I had was noticing and calling out changes in airmass. Sailors are particularly attuned to this.
>
> Masak's accident was a CFIT, the most avoidable of all accidents. This occurred in a contest when he was trying to clear a ridge with a suitable landing field within reach. Every other pilot in the contest did not attempt this. Bottom line: there IS NO contest worth dying over; after all, we are not at war.
> https://app.ntsb.gov/pdfgenerator/ReportGeneratorFile.ashx?EventID=20040604X00737&AKey=1&RType=Final&IType=LA
>
> Tom

I beg to differ. Peter's mishap was a stall spin, just after a sharp turn away from a ridge.

[[email protected]]

Tom, actually I completely agree with you that good risk management will definitely improve ones odds. It will not, however, change your “luck�. (Luck management) is kind of an oxymoron.
Some of us feel, based on our experience, that often it seems “Fate is the Hunter� . Luck being pretty much the same as Fate sans the higher power. You feel that poor airmanship is the principal cause of fatal accidents. Both reasonable positions. Both impossible to prove.
Peace

Dale

[Charles Ethridge]

On Thursday, November 28, 2019 at 12:49:10 PM UTC-5, Andy Blackburn wrote:
> On Wednesday, November 27, 2019 at 6:07:47 PM UTC-8, 2G wrote:
>
> I think you mis-understood me. A pilot makes hundreds to thousands of in-flight maneuvers every flight hour. Almost all of them executed without incident. Many of them are made based on presumptions about what the airmass, pilot workload, traffic situation, aircraft response and physical/mental capabilities of the pilot are likely to be over the next N seconds. Most of the time the consequences of being a bit wrong on where you are in the probability distribution of all of the above doesn't matter, but sometimes it does. You can attempt to move where you are in the probability distribution of unexpected bad things by increasing your margins, but it's not a panacea.
>
> I would speculate that many of the stall/spin accidents I've seen in the mountains had a fair amount to do with the airmass not doing what the pilot expected. You can say - well, don't fly in the mountains! I think that's not especially helpful. An awful lot of final glides gone bad are the result of persistent sink that exceeded the pilot expectation plus whatever buffer he had. I personally interviewed a number of midair-involved pilots and I can tell you that even with a very good scan your odds of picking up an aircraft on a collision course (particularly if it's head-to-head) is about 50/50. Your fovea just isn't big enough for the closing velocities of aircraft. The Air Force, NASA and various air safety bodies around the world have studied it to death and that's the rough number they come up with. That's one reason we have Flarm - you can't train yourself to have a bigger fovea.
>
> You can call all of that poor airmanship if you want, but I think you're whistling past the graveyard a bit.
>
> Andy
>

Well said, Andy.

I recall reading this article in Soaring magazine about rogue thermals:

http://ourdigitalmags.com/publication/index.php?i=226120&m=&l=&p=28&pre=&ver=html5#{%22page%22:26,%22issue_id%22:226120}

We can make SOME of our own luck....but not all of it.

Ben Ethridge
CFI-I/MEI (retired)

[Eric Greenwell[_4_]]

2G wrote on 11/28/2019 7:49 PM:
> On Thursday, November 28, 2019 at 7:23:16 PM UTC-8, Eric Greenwell wrote:
>> 2G wrote on 11/28/2019 4:50 PM:
>>> When someone once told me that I was lucky in life, I replied "I make my own luck."
>>
>> This is, I think, an example of thinking that can lead to an erosion of margins.
>> If you soar, you are exposed to things like weather and other pilots that you do
>> not completely control. I think "stuff happens" and the best I can do is adjust my
>> margins so that my skill can cope with bad stuff.
>>
>
> Hardly, what it means is that you are proactively, instead of passively, involved in all things that effect your life and business. So, this means INCREASING your margins on glide calculations, or NOT flying in iffy weather, rather than depending upon "luck" to get you thru as Masak did. The entire point is NOT depending upon "luck" which is a euphemism for ****-poor planning. You can't control everything that is happening around you, but you can as best prepared as humanly possible.

Neither Ramy, Dale, or I depend on luck to protect us, and I very much doubt that
Peter did either. I know/knew all these guys, and I and they do/did exactly as you
recommend. Your "You can't control everything that is happening around you" is
what we are calling "luck".


--
Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA (change ".netto" to ".us" to email me)
- "A Guide to Self-Launching Sailplane Operation"
https://sites.google.com/site/motorgliders/publications/download-the-guide-1

[[email protected]]

> >>> When someone once told me that I was lucky in life, I replied "I make my own luck."

I agree, but one has to draw a useful lesson.

Consider BlackJack with card counting. Definitely luck is involved because the cards are still random. Skill is involved to be able to understand the situation and choose when and how to play. Applying this skill allows one to manipulate the odds so that there will likely be a favorable outcome. Does this not qualify as "making your own luck"?

Airplane flying requires knowledge and good judgment in choosing when, where, and how to fly. I can appreciate that there is a great deal of this separating old from bold pilots.


Performance soaring has the added random in that you are also dependent on the micro weather as a lift source. You deal with this by putting yourself in the best position to gather energy, hopefully while still accomplishing your task, but always remembering that things are unlikely to work out exactly as expected, so you are continually adjusting.

So for the final glide example, you do your best to setup a final glide, but if you hit continual sink, then move over to get out of the sink street quickly and into the lift street. If that doesn't work, you might be able to circle before getting too low. If that doesn't work, then you should have landing options near the airport. Continuing a deteriorating glide hoping that some unknown will prevent you from having to make your own luck seems one of those 'let us not do that again' things that makes good judgment.

[2G]

On Thursday, November 28, 2019 at 9:35:45 PM UTC-8, Jonathan St. Cloud wrote:
> On Thursday, November 28, 2019 at 5:31:30 PM UTC-8, 2G wrote:
> > On Thursday, November 28, 2019 at 11:57:58 AM UTC-8, Jonathan St. Cloud wrote:
> > > On Thursday, November 28, 2019 at 9:49:10 AM UTC-8, Andy Blackburn wrote:
> > > > On Wednesday, November 27, 2019 at 6:07:47 PM UTC-8, 2G wrote:
> > > >
> > > > I did - 20 years worth. Read every last one of the fatals and a lot of the major damage ones as part of an article I wrote for Soaring. I can give you a full statistical rundown as well - by phase of flight, type of glider, region of the country, contest/XC flight vs local, etc.
> > > >
> > > > I think you mis-understood me. A pilot makes hundreds to thousands of in-flight maneuvers every flight hour. Almost all of them executed without incident. Many of them are made based on presumptions about what the airmass, pilot workload, traffic situation, aircraft response and physical/mental capabilities of the pilot are likely to be over the next N seconds. Most of the time the consequences of being a bit wrong on where you are in the probability distribution of all of the above doesn't matter, but sometimes it does. You can attempt to move where you are in the probability distribution of unexpected bad things by increasing your margins, but it's not a panacea.
> > > >
> > > > I would speculate that many of the stall/spin accidents I've seen in the mountains had a fair amount to do with the airmass not doing what the pilot expected. You can say - well, don't fly in the mountains! I think that's not especially helpful. An awful lot of final glides gone bad are the result of persistent sink that exceeded the pilot expectation plus whatever buffer he had. I personally interviewed a number of midair-involved pilots and I can tell you that even with a very good scan your odds of picking up an aircraft on a collision course (particularly if it's head-to-head) is about 50/50. Your fovea just isn't big enough for the closing velocities of aircraft. The Air Force, NASA and various air safety bodies around the world have studied it to death and that's the rough number they come up with. That's one reason we have Flarm - you can't train yourself to have a bigger fovea.
> > > >
> > > > You can call all of that poor airmanship if you want, but I think you're whistling past the graveyard a bit.
> > > >
> > > > Andy
> > > >
> > > > > Andy,
> > > > >
> > > > > I recommend that you do what I did: review ALL of the fatal glider accidents for the last two years and get back to me. Hint: those accidents did not fall into the 0.01% category.
> > > > >
> > > > > Tom
> > >
> > > The air in which we fly is not uniform, sometimes not even honest. Peter Masak, was a great pilot. He met fate flying in an area and conditions he was familiar with. While I did not view his GPS trace I did speak with a pilot whom did. Nothing unusual noted in the GPS. You can stall at any speed and any attitude. We have seen this in the Sierra's. Andy's right on about the stall/spin accidents, sometimes there are other factors. One of the things I worked with a XC student I had was noticing and calling out changes in airmass. Sailors are particularly attuned to this.
> >
> > Masak's accident was a CFIT, the most avoidable of all accidents. This occurred in a contest when he was trying to clear a ridge with a suitable landing field within reach. Every other pilot in the contest did not attempt this. Bottom line: there IS NO contest worth dying over; after all, we are not at war.
> > https://app.ntsb.gov/pdfgenerator/ReportGeneratorFile.ashx?EventID=20040604X00737&AKey=1&RType=Final&IType=LA
> >
> > Tom
>
> I beg to differ. Peter's mishap was a stall spin, just after a sharp turn away from a ridge.

Only after he realized he wasn't going to make it and made the decision to turn back far too late, so I call it a CFIT.

Tom

[2G]

On Thursday, November 28, 2019 at 10:12:17 PM UTC-8, wrote:
> Tom, actually I completely agree with you that good risk management will definitely improve ones odds. It will not, however, change your “luck�. (Luck management) is kind of an oxymoron.
> Some of us feel, based on our experience, that often it seems “Fate is the Hunter� . Luck being pretty much the same as Fate sans the higher power. You feel that poor airmanship is the principal cause of fatal accidents. Both reasonable positions. Both impossible to prove.
> Peace
>
> Dale

One point I will agree with you on is that you can't reduce all of your risks to zero - for example, if someone comes at you from your blind position with tunnel vision, it's damn hard to avoid a mid-air (it's happened to me, but I did avoid him). Nonetheless, the accident reports are replete with examples of ****-poor airmanship that are totally avoidable, including Masak's.

Tom

[2G]

On Friday, November 29, 2019 at 7:36:05 AM UTC-8, wrote:
> > >>> When someone once told me that I was lucky in life, I replied "I make my own luck."
>
> I agree, but one has to draw a useful lesson.
>
> Consider BlackJack with card counting. Definitely luck is involved because the cards are still random. Skill is involved to be able to understand the situation and choose when and how to play. Applying this skill allows one to manipulate the odds so that there will likely be a favorable outcome.. Does this not qualify as "making your own luck"?
>
> Airplane flying requires knowledge and good judgment in choosing when, where, and how to fly. I can appreciate that there is a great deal of this separating old from bold pilots.
>
>
> Performance soaring has the added random in that you are also dependent on the micro weather as a lift source. You deal with this by putting yourself in the best position to gather energy, hopefully while still accomplishing your task, but always remembering that things are unlikely to work out exactly as expected, so you are continually adjusting.
>
> So for the final glide example, you do your best to setup a final glide, but if you hit continual sink, then move over to get out of the sink street quickly and into the lift street. If that doesn't work, you might be able to circle before getting too low. If that doesn't work, then you should have landing options near the airport. Continuing a deteriorating glide hoping that some unknown will prevent you from having to make your own luck seems one of those 'let us not do that again' things that makes good judgment.

Yes, developing black jack skills is an example of "making your own luck."

I once retrieved a guy who damaged his glider landing out in the Nevada desert sagebrush (they really aren't brush, but actually are small trees). He had a perfectly landable farmer's field on the other side of the valley, but chose to waste his valuable altitude looking for elusive lift. Obviously, this was a bad decision by the pilot that was totally avoidable. In this case, he made his own BAD luck.

People use "bad luck" instead of admitting to poor judgment. To paraphrase, luck is not a strategy, good planning and execution is.

Tom

[Andy Blackburn[_3_]]

I think you have a much stronger sense that you are master of your destiny than many of us. I've certainly read the stall-spin stories of pilots in benign-handling trainers on a clear, windless day simply misjudging the turn to final by getting too low and ruddering the turn until they depart the airplane. It happens and it's about as close to 100% pilot error and poor airmanship as you can get. There are a number of those in the public record. I just think many cases are more complex than that and sit at the end of an accumulation of decisions where the pilot estimates wrong on which is the less-risky choice to make. I think this is particularly true if you are pushing for performance - you make risk-reward tradeoffs all the time and many of those are based on a sample of experience that is just insufficient for the range of situations that randomness can throw at you - but they work out 99.9% of the time - you just don't know if it's 99.9% or 99.999% and over time that matters.

Example: The Ethiopian 737MAX flight crew, faced with runaway trim and control forces too high to hold the nose up elected to re-engage the MCAS system to get electric trim back. It turned out not to help and lot of people died. It is possible that if they'd made the exact right choices at the exact right time they might've saved the aircraft, so is the fact that they failed '****-poor airmanship' or something more complex? They knew that MCAS-induced trim runaway was possible from the prior accident only weeks before. There was a much-criticized NYT op-ed that basically called the Ethiopian crew bad pilots. Most other experts said the situation was one that put so much stress on the crew that it's not reasonable to expect airmanship should be the correct solution to the problem, even if airmanship could've saved it. With perfect airmanship Sully could've gotten his A320 back to Laguardia, so was landing in the Hudson ****-poor airmanship? After all, he destroyed an airplane. I see more gray out there than you do and it give me pause..

Which brings me to one final thought. There is also a human factors aspect of all of this. My personal experience is that there are a number of pilots with an extremely strong "internal locus of control". In their own estimation, they know exactly what the airplane will do, are excellent at reading the weather and always keep perfectly sufficient margins. Many (not all) of this personality type are hostile to feedback or thought that challenges that internal view. It's more than a handful of pilots I've encountered who, when confronted with feedback that they cut another pilot off in a thermal (or other similar behavior) responded with what amounted to "I'm fine - if you don't like it get out of my way". This, too, has given me pause, and in more than one case individuals have been encouraged to seek other forms of entertainment - particularly in the racing community. So, what happens to the pilot who is absolutely certain that his margins are good and he's read the weather right, configured the aircraft properly, etc. when a flying situation gets outside of their rock-solid belief system of what might happen? Do they go into denial or are they flexible in their view that they may have miscalculated something? Since many accidents are based on accumulations of decisions, the ability to re-estimate one's assumptions is a critical personality trait in breaking the potential accident chain.

Skill certainly counts, but so does attitude. It might be more humility than skill that saves your life.

Andy Blackburn
9B

On Friday, November 29, 2019 at 9:41:14 AM UTC-8, 2G wrote:
>
> One point I will agree with you on is that you can't reduce all of your risks to zero - for example, if someone comes at you from your blind position with tunnel vision, it's damn hard to avoid a mid-air (it's happened to me, but I did avoid him). Nonetheless, the accident reports are replete with examples of ****-poor airmanship that are totally avoidable, including Masak's.
>
> Tom

[2G]

On Friday, November 29, 2019 at 12:44:05 PM UTC-8, Andy Blackburn wrote:
> I think you have a much stronger sense that you are master of your destiny than many of us. I've certainly read the stall-spin stories of pilots in benign-handling trainers on a clear, windless day simply misjudging the turn to final by getting too low and ruddering the turn until they depart the airplane. It happens and it's about as close to 100% pilot error and poor airmanship as you can get. There are a number of those in the public record. I just think many cases are more complex than that and sit at the end of an accumulation of decisions where the pilot estimates wrong on which is the less-risky choice to make. I think this is particularly true if you are pushing for performance - you make risk-reward tradeoffs all the time and many of those are based on a sample of experience that is just insufficient for the range of situations that randomness can throw at you - but they work out 99.9% of the time - you just don't know if it's 99.9% or 99.999% and over time that matters.
>
> Example: The Ethiopian 737MAX flight crew, faced with runaway trim and control forces too high to hold the nose up elected to re-engage the MCAS system to get electric trim back. It turned out not to help and lot of people died. It is possible that if they'd made the exact right choices at the exact right time they might've saved the aircraft, so is the fact that they failed '****-poor airmanship' or something more complex? They knew that MCAS-induced trim runaway was possible from the prior accident only weeks before. There was a much-criticized NYT op-ed that basically called the Ethiopian crew bad pilots. Most other experts said the situation was one that put so much stress on the crew that it's not reasonable to expect airmanship should be the correct solution to the problem, even if airmanship could've saved it. With perfect airmanship Sully could've gotten his A320 back to Laguardia, so was landing in the Hudson ****-poor airmanship? After all, he destroyed an airplane. I see more gray out there than you do and it give me pause.
>
> Which brings me to one final thought. There is also a human factors aspect of all of this. My personal experience is that there are a number of pilots with an extremely strong "internal locus of control". In their own estimation, they know exactly what the airplane will do, are excellent at reading the weather and always keep perfectly sufficient margins. Many (not all) of this personality type are hostile to feedback or thought that challenges that internal view. It's more than a handful of pilots I've encountered who, when confronted with feedback that they cut another pilot off in a thermal (or other similar behavior) responded with what amounted to "I'm fine - if you don't like it get out of my way". This, too, has given me pause, and in more than one case individuals have been encouraged to seek other forms of entertainment - particularly in the racing community. So, what happens to the pilot who is absolutely certain that his margins are good and he's read the weather right, configured the aircraft properly, etc. when a flying situation gets outside of their rock-solid belief system of what might happen? Do they go into denial or are they flexible in their view that they may have miscalculated something? Since many accidents are based on accumulations of decisions, the ability to re-estimate one's assumptions is a critical personality trait in breaking the potential accident chain.
>
> Skill certainly counts, but so does attitude. It might be more humility than skill that saves your life.
>
> Andy Blackburn
> 9B
>
> On Friday, November 29, 2019 at 9:41:14 AM UTC-8, 2G wrote:
> >
> > One point I will agree with you on is that you can't reduce all of your risks to zero - for example, if someone comes at you from your blind position with tunnel vision, it's damn hard to avoid a mid-air (it's happened to me, but I did avoid him). Nonetheless, the accident reports are replete with examples of ****-poor airmanship that are totally avoidable, including Masak's.
> >
> > Tom

Andy,

I am getting the strong sense of deflection from my basic premise. First off, I am not talking about a complex airliner accident which involves a clear design error on the part of the manufacturer (Boeing). I know Boeing engineers, and they are saying that Boeing screwed up. To blame the pilots for this is far more than a stretch.

Second, the article I think you are referring to (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/12/business/ethiopian-airline-crash-school.html) made no such claim. In fact, it lauds the Ethiopian flight school. It only mentioned the copilots flight time (200 hr), which is a matter of fact.

Third, trying to analyze the difference between 99.9% (1 in 1000) and 99.999% (1 in 100,000) is a fool's errand. In a good year, I might have 40 flights, 50 tops. 1 in 1000 means it will take forty to fifty years to occur, which MIGHT be once in my lifetime, at best. 1 in 100,000 means forget it: it's not important. I am talking about situations that have a reasonable chance of occurring on a flight, like 1 in 10 or 1 in 100. Take Masak's accident; as he was gliding toward the ridge line he had to see the ridge climbing on his canopy; what did he think the odds were of clearing the ridge, 1 in 2 if that? But he kept pressing on until he could see that he was BELOW the tree tops and had NO chance of clearing them. That delayed decision making process is why I categorize the accident cause as a CFIT; the stall/spin was merely a last second desperation maneuver with no chance of success. This accident was TOTALLY AVOIDABLE, yet it happened to a high-time, skilled pilot flying in a familiar area!

Other types of fatal avoidable accidents include hitting the only tree in field during a landout, flying IFR in the mountains and stall/spins in the pattern. Yes, all of these have occurred in the last two years to glider pilots, two to commercial pilots (one of those carrying a paying passenger).

I don't want to over-think things here - it actually is a pretty basic concept. If you have poor stick and rudder skills, or poor decision making skills, or both, you are an accident waiting to happen.

Tom

[[email protected]]

On Friday, November 29, 2019 at 5:53:54 PM UTC-5, 2G wrote:
> On Friday, November 29, 2019 at 12:44:05 PM UTC-8, Andy Blackburn wrote:
> > I think you have a much stronger sense that you are master of your destiny than many of us. I've certainly read the stall-spin stories of pilots in benign-handling trainers on a clear, windless day simply misjudging the turn to final by getting too low and ruddering the turn until they depart the airplane. It happens and it's about as close to 100% pilot error and poor airmanship as you can get. There are a number of those in the public record. I just think many cases are more complex than that and sit at the end of an accumulation of decisions where the pilot estimates wrong on which is the less-risky choice to make. I think this is particularly true if you are pushing for performance - you make risk-reward tradeoffs all the time and many of those are based on a sample of experience that is just insufficient for the range of situations that randomness can throw at you - but they work out 99.9% of the time - you just don't know if it's 99.9% or 99.999% and over time that matters.
> >
> > Example: The Ethiopian 737MAX flight crew, faced with runaway trim and control forces too high to hold the nose up elected to re-engage the MCAS system to get electric trim back. It turned out not to help and lot of people died. It is possible that if they'd made the exact right choices at the exact right time they might've saved the aircraft, so is the fact that they failed '****-poor airmanship' or something more complex? They knew that MCAS-induced trim runaway was possible from the prior accident only weeks before. There was a much-criticized NYT op-ed that basically called the Ethiopian crew bad pilots. Most other experts said the situation was one that put so much stress on the crew that it's not reasonable to expect airmanship should be the correct solution to the problem, even if airmanship could've saved it. With perfect airmanship Sully could've gotten his A320 back to Laguardia, so was landing in the Hudson ****-poor airmanship? After all, he destroyed an airplane. I see more gray out there than you do and it give me pause.
> >
> > Which brings me to one final thought. There is also a human factors aspect of all of this. My personal experience is that there are a number of pilots with an extremely strong "internal locus of control". In their own estimation, they know exactly what the airplane will do, are excellent at reading the weather and always keep perfectly sufficient margins. Many (not all) of this personality type are hostile to feedback or thought that challenges that internal view. It's more than a handful of pilots I've encountered who, when confronted with feedback that they cut another pilot off in a thermal (or other similar behavior) responded with what amounted to "I'm fine - if you don't like it get out of my way". This, too, has given me pause, and in more than one case individuals have been encouraged to seek other forms of entertainment - particularly in the racing community. So, what happens to the pilot who is absolutely certain that his margins are good and he's read the weather right, configured the aircraft properly, etc. when a flying situation gets outside of their rock-solid belief system of what might happen? Do they go into denial or are they flexible in their view that they may have miscalculated something? Since many accidents are based on accumulations of decisions, the ability to re-estimate one's assumptions is a critical personality trait in breaking the potential accident chain.
> >
> > Skill certainly counts, but so does attitude. It might be more humility than skill that saves your life.
> >
> > Andy Blackburn
> > 9B
> >
> > On Friday, November 29, 2019 at 9:41:14 AM UTC-8, 2G wrote:
> > >
> > > One point I will agree with you on is that you can't reduce all of your risks to zero - for example, if someone comes at you from your blind position with tunnel vision, it's damn hard to avoid a mid-air (it's happened to me, but I did avoid him). Nonetheless, the accident reports are replete with examples of ****-poor airmanship that are totally avoidable, including Masak's.
> > >
> > > Tom
>
> Andy,
>
> I am getting the strong sense of deflection from my basic premise. First off, I am not talking about a complex airliner accident which involves a clear design error on the part of the manufacturer (Boeing). I know Boeing engineers, and they are saying that Boeing screwed up. To blame the pilots for this is far more than a stretch.
>
> Second, the article I think you are referring to (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/12/business/ethiopian-airline-crash-school.html) made no such claim. In fact, it lauds the Ethiopian flight school. It only mentioned the copilots flight time (200 hr), which is a matter of fact.
>
> Third, trying to analyze the difference between 99.9% (1 in 1000) and 99.999% (1 in 100,000) is a fool's errand. In a good year, I might have 40 flights, 50 tops. 1 in 1000 means it will take forty to fifty years to occur, which MIGHT be once in my lifetime, at best. 1 in 100,000 means forget it: it's not important. I am talking about situations that have a reasonable chance of occurring on a flight, like 1 in 10 or 1 in 100. Take Masak's accident; as he was gliding toward the ridge line he had to see the ridge climbing on his canopy; what did he think the odds were of clearing the ridge, 1 in 2 if that? But he kept pressing on until he could see that he was BELOW the tree tops and had NO chance of clearing them. That delayed decision making process is why I categorize the accident cause as a CFIT; the stall/spin was merely a last second desperation maneuver with no chance of success. This accident was TOTALLY AVOIDABLE, yet it happened to a high-time, skilled pilot flying in a familiar area!
>
> Other types of fatal avoidable accidents include hitting the only tree in field during a landout, flying IFR in the mountains and stall/spins in the pattern. Yes, all of these have occurred in the last two years to glider pilots, two to commercial pilots (one of those carrying a paying passenger).
>
> I don't want to over-think things here - it actually is a pretty basic concept. If you have poor stick and rudder skills, or poor decision making skills, or both, you are an accident waiting to happen.
>
> Tom

I get it, if I believe in my airmanship then I'm exempt from the accident pool. Statistics don't apply to us 'cause airmanship.

[2G]

On Friday, November 29, 2019 at 6:10:20 PM UTC-8, wrote:
> On Friday, November 29, 2019 at 5:53:54 PM UTC-5, 2G wrote:
> > On Friday, November 29, 2019 at 12:44:05 PM UTC-8, Andy Blackburn wrote:
> > > I think you have a much stronger sense that you are master of your destiny than many of us. I've certainly read the stall-spin stories of pilots in benign-handling trainers on a clear, windless day simply misjudging the turn to final by getting too low and ruddering the turn until they depart the airplane. It happens and it's about as close to 100% pilot error and poor airmanship as you can get. There are a number of those in the public record. I just think many cases are more complex than that and sit at the end of an accumulation of decisions where the pilot estimates wrong on which is the less-risky choice to make. I think this is particularly true if you are pushing for performance - you make risk-reward tradeoffs all the time and many of those are based on a sample of experience that is just insufficient for the range of situations that randomness can throw at you - but they work out 99.9% of the time - you just don't know if it's 99.9% or 99.999% and over time that matters.
> > >
> > > Example: The Ethiopian 737MAX flight crew, faced with runaway trim and control forces too high to hold the nose up elected to re-engage the MCAS system to get electric trim back. It turned out not to help and lot of people died. It is possible that if they'd made the exact right choices at the exact right time they might've saved the aircraft, so is the fact that they failed '****-poor airmanship' or something more complex? They knew that MCAS-induced trim runaway was possible from the prior accident only weeks before. There was a much-criticized NYT op-ed that basically called the Ethiopian crew bad pilots. Most other experts said the situation was one that put so much stress on the crew that it's not reasonable to expect airmanship should be the correct solution to the problem, even if airmanship could've saved it. With perfect airmanship Sully could've gotten his A320 back to Laguardia, so was landing in the Hudson ****-poor airmanship? After all, he destroyed an airplane. I see more gray out there than you do and it give me pause.
> > >
> > > Which brings me to one final thought. There is also a human factors aspect of all of this. My personal experience is that there are a number of pilots with an extremely strong "internal locus of control". In their own estimation, they know exactly what the airplane will do, are excellent at reading the weather and always keep perfectly sufficient margins. Many (not all) of this personality type are hostile to feedback or thought that challenges that internal view. It's more than a handful of pilots I've encountered who, when confronted with feedback that they cut another pilot off in a thermal (or other similar behavior) responded with what amounted to "I'm fine - if you don't like it get out of my way". This, too, has given me pause, and in more than one case individuals have been encouraged to seek other forms of entertainment - particularly in the racing community. So, what happens to the pilot who is absolutely certain that his margins are good and he's read the weather right, configured the aircraft properly, etc. when a flying situation gets outside of their rock-solid belief system of what might happen? Do they go into denial or are they flexible in their view that they may have miscalculated something? Since many accidents are based on accumulations of decisions, the ability to re-estimate one's assumptions is a critical personality trait in breaking the potential accident chain.
> > >
> > > Skill certainly counts, but so does attitude. It might be more humility than skill that saves your life.
> > >
> > > Andy Blackburn
> > > 9B
> > >
> > > On Friday, November 29, 2019 at 9:41:14 AM UTC-8, 2G wrote:
> > > >
> > > > One point I will agree with you on is that you can't reduce all of your risks to zero - for example, if someone comes at you from your blind position with tunnel vision, it's damn hard to avoid a mid-air (it's happened to me, but I did avoid him). Nonetheless, the accident reports are replete with examples of ****-poor airmanship that are totally avoidable, including Masak's.
> > > >
> > > > Tom
> >
> > Andy,
> >
> > I am getting the strong sense of deflection from my basic premise. First off, I am not talking about a complex airliner accident which involves a clear design error on the part of the manufacturer (Boeing). I know Boeing engineers, and they are saying that Boeing screwed up. To blame the pilots for this is far more than a stretch.
> >
> > Second, the article I think you are referring to (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/12/business/ethiopian-airline-crash-school.html) made no such claim. In fact, it lauds the Ethiopian flight school. It only mentioned the copilots flight time (200 hr), which is a matter of fact.
> >
> > Third, trying to analyze the difference between 99.9% (1 in 1000) and 99.999% (1 in 100,000) is a fool's errand. In a good year, I might have 40 flights, 50 tops. 1 in 1000 means it will take forty to fifty years to occur, which MIGHT be once in my lifetime, at best. 1 in 100,000 means forget it: it's not important. I am talking about situations that have a reasonable chance of occurring on a flight, like 1 in 10 or 1 in 100. Take Masak's accident; as he was gliding toward the ridge line he had to see the ridge climbing on his canopy; what did he think the odds were of clearing the ridge, 1 in 2 if that? But he kept pressing on until he could see that he was BELOW the tree tops and had NO chance of clearing them. That delayed decision making process is why I categorize the accident cause as a CFIT; the stall/spin was merely a last second desperation maneuver with no chance of success.. This accident was TOTALLY AVOIDABLE, yet it happened to a high-time, skilled pilot flying in a familiar area!
> >
> > Other types of fatal avoidable accidents include hitting the only tree in field during a landout, flying IFR in the mountains and stall/spins in the pattern. Yes, all of these have occurred in the last two years to glider pilots, two to commercial pilots (one of those carrying a paying passenger).
> >
> > I don't want to over-think things here - it actually is a pretty basic concept. If you have poor stick and rudder skills, or poor decision making skills, or both, you are an accident waiting to happen.
> >
> > Tom
>
> I get it, if I believe in my airmanship then I'm exempt from the accident pool. Statistics don't apply to us 'cause airmanship.

No, I'm sorry, but you DON'T get it.

Tom

[[email protected]]

> No, I'm sorry, but you DON'T get it.
>
> Tom

Tom don't you want others to have the same safety level you have? Let us all come together in the cult of airmanship. Believe and immortality is yours.

[2G]

On Friday, November 29, 2019 at 7:08:21 PM UTC-8, wrote:
> > No, I'm sorry, but you DON'T get it.
> >
> > Tom
>
> Tom don't you want others to have the same safety level you have? Let us all come together in the cult of airmanship. Believe and immortality is yours.

No, I'm sorry, you DON'T get it.

Tom

[Branko Stojkovic]

On Friday, November 29, 2019 at 2:53:54 PM UTC-8, 2G wrote:
> I don't want to over-think things here - it actually is a pretty basic concept. If you have poor stick-and-rudder skills, or poor decision making skills, or both, you are an accident waiting to happen.
>
> Tom

It is true that poor stick-and-rudder skills and/or poor decision-making skills cause majority of fatal and non-fatal accidents, and near misses. Case closed!

Or is it?

With regards to the stick-and-rudder skills, the matter is pretty straight forward. In general, there is a direct correlation/causation between the flying experience and the stick-and-rudder skill level, i.e., the beginners have limited skills and the experts have excellent skills. Furthermore, most pilots can fairly accurately assess their own stick-and-rudder skills. A yearly check ride with an instructor provides a useful feedback about the areas that need improvement.

Okay, so what about them decision-making skills, which also vary among the glider pilot population? It is safe to say that in this case there is a much weaker correlation between the flying experience and the skill level. It seems that the decision-making skills are much more related to the psychological makeup of the pilot and makes things much more complicated and causes several intractable problems.

Problem #1: Few of us who have poor decision-making skills are aware of that fact. The simplest reason is that we have been getting away with making certain types of poor decisions. Even if our poor decisions caused us a few incidents or near misses, we are inclined to place the blame elsewhere (very likely), instead of openly examining our decision-making processes (not likely) or seeking help/advice (very unlikely).

Problem #2: There are no established methods of tracking the decision-making skills, nor of providing feedback, like there is for the stick-and-rudder skills. Some experienced pilots, when they see that someone has made a poor decision, will speak to that pilot and point out the problem. Others will not, likely because of their own personality and/or the offending pilot's personality. In any case, only few of our bad decisions will be pointed out to us.

Problem #3: Even if someone tells me that I made a bad decision, or God forbid, that my decision-making skills are lacking, I will likely take that as a personal attack because of an instant emotional reaction of my injured ego. What happens next will depend on my psychological makeup. If I am rough around the edges, or have a short fuse, I may tell you to bugger off and mind you own damn business. On the other hand, if I'm polite and easy going, I may smile and say "okay thanks I appreciate it," but in my head I'd be thinking "F#@$ YOU, you know-it-all." The problem is that in either case, I have not learned a damn thing from this experience. If anything, it may motivate me to do the same thing (make the same poor decision) again, just to prove (at least to myself) that it's no big deal.

If the above analysis is correct, then is there a solution? There better be, because lives are at stake. I suggest starting by asking yourself a simple question:

"Do I sometime make poor decisions that could cause me to have an accident?"

If your answer is "yes", then you are sufficiently self-aware and you are probably in the process of improving your decision-making skills.

If your answer is "no" or "not that I'm aware off", then you have a problem that might one day cost you your life. In order to make progress you may need help, professional or otherwise.

Branko XYU

[Martin Gregorie[_6_]]

On Sat, 30 Nov 2019 00:30:19 -0800, Branko Stojkovic wrote:


A good analysis. Thanks.


--
Martin | martin at
Gregorie | gregorie dot org

[Charles Ethridge]

On Saturday, November 30, 2019 at 7:29:56 AM UTC-5, Martin Gregorie wrote:
> On Sat, 30 Nov 2019 00:30:19 -0800, Branko Stojkovic wrote:
>
>
> A good analysis. Thanks.
>
>
> --
> Martin | martin at
> Gregorie | gregorie dot org

Agree.

My takeaways/ideas from the above thus far:

1. Stay humble.

2. Get lots of dual time with someone who is demonstrably better at racing (or cross-country) than you, AND who has a reputation for putting safety first.

3. Try to get a ballistic parachute retro-fitted into your glider (Is this even possible?). Encourage manufacturers to install these in new gliders.

4. Encourage SSA to require a reasonable, safe hard deck for all races. (Sorry, hot dogs, it's for your own good. :-))

Ben

[Jonathon May]

At 13:38 30 November 2019, Charles Ethridge wrote:
>On Saturday, November 30, 2019 at 7:29:56 AM UTC-5,
Martin Gregorie wrote:
>> On Sat, 30 Nov 2019 00:30:19 -0800, Branko Stojkovic
wrote:
>>
>>
>> A good analysis. Thanks.
>>
>>
>> --
>> Martin | martin at
>> Gregorie | gregorie dot org
>
>Agree.
>
>My takeaways/ideas from the above thus far:
>
>1. Stay humble.
>
>2. Get lots of dual time with someone who is demonstrably
better at racing
>(or cross-country) than you, AND who has a reputation for
putting safety
>first.
>
>3. Try to get a ballistic parachute retro-fitted into your glider
(Is this
>even possible?). Encourage manufacturers to install these in
new gliders.



>
>4. Encourage SSA to require a reasonable, safe hard deck
for all races.
>(Sorry, hot dogs, it's for your own good. :-))
>
>Ben
>


One of the problems is that as we age the time it takes to
make a decision increases.
So if you keep your hours reasonably high, your stick and
rudder skill should stay OK but your thinking time might
increase.

This year my annual ride with the boss was short, every one at
the launch point was having great fun and when I was asked
to fly from the front seat ,several people said "He is going to
be checking your look out".
So it was a genuine surprise when the tug wings wagged at
250ft on the tow out.

Thankfully the auto- reflexes are till working.I pulled the
release, pushed the nose down and commenced a turn before
either of us had chance to speak.
My chief instructor knows what to look for in different pilots
thats why he is a paid professional with over 20 years gliding
instructor training behind him.
I on the other hand am an ageing amateur giving my time for
free and fighting the onset of age with some trepidations
,because I know one of us is going to have to call "time"
before it all goes wrong.

To sum up I think an experienced professional examiner should
be able to check for the weakness that could hurt you .
Whether it's an over confident beginner or an over the hill old
timer.
>

[Eric Greenwell[_4_]]

Charles Ethridge wrote on 11/30/2019 5:38 AM:
> 3. Try to get a ballistic parachute retro-fitted into your glider (Is this even possible?). Encourage manufacturers to install these in new gliders.

I don't know of any that can be retro-fitted, but there are some gliders that have
them as options or standard equipment, like the Silent 2 and GP14/GP15. My Phoenix
touring motorglider has one, and I find it a great comfort, as does my wife (it's
a two seater, she flies with me sometimes). It's more convenient, too, as I don't
have to put on a parachute, but simply get in and buckle up. Easier getting out of
the glider at the end of the flight, too.

--
Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA (change ".netto" to ".us" to email me)
- "A Guide to Self-Launching Sailplane Operation"
https://sites.google.com/site/motorgliders/publications/download-the-guide-1

[2G]

On Saturday, November 30, 2019 at 12:30:21 AM UTC-8, Branko Stojkovic wrote:
> On Friday, November 29, 2019 at 2:53:54 PM UTC-8, 2G wrote:
> > I don't want to over-think things here - it actually is a pretty basic concept. If you have poor stick-and-rudder skills, or poor decision making skills, or both, you are an accident waiting to happen.
> >
> > Tom
>
> It is true that poor stick-and-rudder skills and/or poor decision-making skills cause majority of fatal and non-fatal accidents, and near misses. Case closed!
>
> Or is it?
>
> With regards to the stick-and-rudder skills, the matter is pretty straight forward. In general, there is a direct correlation/causation between the flying experience and the stick-and-rudder skill level, i.e., the beginners have limited skills and the experts have excellent skills. Furthermore, most pilots can fairly accurately assess their own stick-and-rudder skills. A yearly check ride with an instructor provides a useful feedback about the areas that need improvement.
>
> Okay, so what about them decision-making skills, which also vary among the glider pilot population? It is safe to say that in this case there is a much weaker correlation between the flying experience and the skill level. It seems that the decision-making skills are much more related to the psychological makeup of the pilot and makes things much more complicated and causes several intractable problems.
>
> Problem #1: Few of us who have poor decision-making skills are aware of that fact. The simplest reason is that we have been getting away with making certain types of poor decisions. Even if our poor decisions caused us a few incidents or near misses, we are inclined to place the blame elsewhere (very likely), instead of openly examining our decision-making processes (not likely) or seeking help/advice (very unlikely).
>
> Problem #2: There are no established methods of tracking the decision-making skills, nor of providing feedback, like there is for the stick-and-rudder skills. Some experienced pilots, when they see that someone has made a poor decision, will speak to that pilot and point out the problem. Others will not, likely because of their own personality and/or the offending pilot's personality. In any case, only few of our bad decisions will be pointed out to us.
>
> Problem #3: Even if someone tells me that I made a bad decision, or God forbid, that my decision-making skills are lacking, I will likely take that as a personal attack because of an instant emotional reaction of my injured ego. What happens next will depend on my psychological makeup. If I am rough around the edges, or have a short fuse, I may tell you to bugger off and mind you own damn business. On the other hand, if I'm polite and easy going, I may smile and say "okay thanks I appreciate it," but in my head I'd be thinking "F#@$ YOU, you know-it-all." The problem is that in either case, I have not learned a damn thing from this experience. If anything, it may motivate me to do the same thing (make the same poor decision) again, just to prove (at least to myself) that it's no big deal.
>
> If the above analysis is correct, then is there a solution? There better be, because lives are at stake. I suggest starting by asking yourself a simple question:
>
> "Do I sometime make poor decisions that could cause me to have an accident?"
>
> If your answer is "yes", then you are sufficiently self-aware and you are probably in the process of improving your decision-making skills.
>
> If your answer is "no" or "not that I'm aware off", then you have a problem that might one day cost you your life. In order to make progress you may need help, professional or otherwise.
>
> Branko XYU

Branko,

I will answer your question right after you answer this one: do you think Masak made a bad decision(s) that cost him his life?

Tom

[Phil Plane]

On Saturday, 30 November 2019 21:30:21 UTC+13, Branko Stojkovic wrote:

> With regards to the stick-and-rudder skills, the matter is pretty straight forward. In general, there is a direct correlation/causation between the flying experience and the stick-and-rudder skill level, i.e., the beginners have limited skills and the experts have excellent skills. Furthermore, most pilots can fairly accurately assess their own stick-and-rudder skills. A yearly check ride with an instructor provides a useful feedback about the areas that need improvement.

Well I would take issue with that statement. I fly with a wide range of pilots from a wide range of backgrounds and have learned to be careful with generalisations.

I have flown with experienced competition pilots with thousands of hours who I would not be comfortable with in a tricky situation. I have flown with pilots who have barely finished their training with a few hundred hours who I wouldn't want to take control from for fear of embarrassing myself because they flew so precisely and correctly. I don't even try to guess in advance which is which any more. I wait for the evidence.

So I would suggest that good handling skills can be learned relatively quickly, but that they don't just get better with repetition. You need to actively try to improve.

Many 'experienced' pilots have been doing the same thing over an over and have embedded bad habits or lazy handling into their flying.

The biggest difference I see is many low time pilots know they haven't learned enough yet and want to get better.

When pilots just want to get by, they should probably think of moving to an activity that doesn't punish mistakes quite as hard.

> Okay, so what about them decision-making skills, which also vary among the glider pilot population? It is safe to say that in this case there is a much weaker correlation between the flying experience and the skill level. It seems that the decision-making skills are much more related to the psychological makeup of the pilot and makes things much more complicated and causes several intractable problems.

This is the major factor. If you come up with a solution, let me know.

--
Phil Plane

[India November[_2_]]

On Friday, November 29, 2019 at 5:53:54 PM UTC-5, 2G wrote:
> On Friday, November 29, 2019 at 12:44:05 PM UTC-8, Andy Blackburn wrote:
> > I think you have a much stronger sense that you are master of your destiny than many of us. I've certainly read the stall-spin stories of pilots in benign-handling trainers on a clear, windless day simply misjudging the turn to final by getting too low and ruddering the turn until they depart the airplane. It happens and it's about as close to 100% pilot error and poor airmanship as you can get. There are a number of those in the public record. I just think many cases are more complex than that and sit at the end of an accumulation of decisions where the pilot estimates wrong on which is the less-risky choice to make. I think this is particularly true if you are pushing for performance - you make risk-reward tradeoffs all the time and many of those are based on a sample of experience that is just insufficient for the range of situations that randomness can throw at you - but they work out 99.9% of the time - you just don't know if it's 99.9% or 99.999% and over time that matters.
> >
> > Example: The Ethiopian 737MAX flight crew, faced with runaway trim and control forces too high to hold the nose up elected to re-engage the MCAS system to get electric trim back. It turned out not to help and lot of people died. It is possible that if they'd made the exact right choices at the exact right time they might've saved the aircraft, so is the fact that they failed '****-poor airmanship' or something more complex? They knew that MCAS-induced trim runaway was possible from the prior accident only weeks before. There was a much-criticized NYT op-ed that basically called the Ethiopian crew bad pilots. Most other experts said the situation was one that put so much stress on the crew that it's not reasonable to expect airmanship should be the correct solution to the problem, even if airmanship could've saved it. With perfect airmanship Sully could've gotten his A320 back to Laguardia, so was landing in the Hudson ****-poor airmanship? After all, he destroyed an airplane. I see more gray out there than you do and it give me pause.
> >
> > Which brings me to one final thought. There is also a human factors aspect of all of this. My personal experience is that there are a number of pilots with an extremely strong "internal locus of control". In their own estimation, they know exactly what the airplane will do, are excellent at reading the weather and always keep perfectly sufficient margins. Many (not all) of this personality type are hostile to feedback or thought that challenges that internal view. It's more than a handful of pilots I've encountered who, when confronted with feedback that they cut another pilot off in a thermal (or other similar behavior) responded with what amounted to "I'm fine - if you don't like it get out of my way". This, too, has given me pause, and in more than one case individuals have been encouraged to seek other forms of entertainment - particularly in the racing community. So, what happens to the pilot who is absolutely certain that his margins are good and he's read the weather right, configured the aircraft properly, etc. when a flying situation gets outside of their rock-solid belief system of what might happen? Do they go into denial or are they flexible in their view that they may have miscalculated something? Since many accidents are based on accumulations of decisions, the ability to re-estimate one's assumptions is a critical personality trait in breaking the potential accident chain.
> >
> > Skill certainly counts, but so does attitude. It might be more humility than skill that saves your life.
> >
> > Andy Blackburn
> > 9B
> >
> > On Friday, November 29, 2019 at 9:41:14 AM UTC-8, 2G wrote:
> > >
> > > One point I will agree with you on is that you can't reduce all of your risks to zero - for example, if someone comes at you from your blind position with tunnel vision, it's damn hard to avoid a mid-air (it's happened to me, but I did avoid him). Nonetheless, the accident reports are replete with examples of ****-poor airmanship that are totally avoidable, including Masak's.
> > >
> > > Tom
>
> Andy,
>
> I am getting the strong sense of deflection from my basic premise. First off, I am not talking about a complex airliner accident which involves a clear design error on the part of the manufacturer (Boeing). I know Boeing engineers, and they are saying that Boeing screwed up. To blame the pilots for this is far more than a stretch.
>
> Second, the article I think you are referring to (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/12/business/ethiopian-airline-crash-school.html) made no such claim. In fact, it lauds the Ethiopian flight school. It only mentioned the copilots flight time (200 hr), which is a matter of fact.
>
> Third, trying to analyze the difference between 99.9% (1 in 1000) and 99.999% (1 in 100,000) is a fool's errand. In a good year, I might have 40 flights, 50 tops. 1 in 1000 means it will take forty to fifty years to occur, which MIGHT be once in my lifetime, at best. 1 in 100,000 means forget it: it's not important. I am talking about situations that have a reasonable chance of occurring on a flight, like 1 in 10 or 1 in 100. Take Masak's accident; as he was gliding toward the ridge line he had to see the ridge climbing on his canopy; what did he think the odds were of clearing the ridge, 1 in 2 if that? But he kept pressing on until he could see that he was BELOW the tree tops and had NO chance of clearing them. That delayed decision making process is why I categorize the accident cause as a CFIT; the stall/spin was merely a last second desperation maneuver with no chance of success. This accident was TOTALLY AVOIDABLE, yet it happened to a high-time, skilled pilot flying in a familiar area!
>
> Other types of fatal avoidable accidents include hitting the only tree in field during a landout, flying IFR in the mountains and stall/spins in the pattern. Yes, all of these have occurred in the last two years to glider pilots, two to commercial pilots (one of those carrying a paying passenger).
>
> I don't want to over-think things here - it actually is a pretty basic concept. If you have poor stick and rudder skills, or poor decision making skills, or both, you are an accident waiting to happen.
>
> Tom

Actually, the following NYT article written by William Langewiesche (son of Wolfgang, the author of "Stick and Rudder") is highly critical of the 737 Max pilots and blames them for both crashes: "What we had in the two downed airplanes was a textbook failure of airmanship".
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/18/magazine/boeing-737-max-crashes.

In this context, "poor airmanship" seems like a blame the victim catch-all that can be applied in any accident.

[2G]

On Saturday, November 30, 2019 at 12:21:23 PM UTC-8, India November wrote:
> On Friday, November 29, 2019 at 5:53:54 PM UTC-5, 2G wrote:
> > On Friday, November 29, 2019 at 12:44:05 PM UTC-8, Andy Blackburn wrote:
> > > I think you have a much stronger sense that you are master of your destiny than many of us. I've certainly read the stall-spin stories of pilots in benign-handling trainers on a clear, windless day simply misjudging the turn to final by getting too low and ruddering the turn until they depart the airplane. It happens and it's about as close to 100% pilot error and poor airmanship as you can get. There are a number of those in the public record. I just think many cases are more complex than that and sit at the end of an accumulation of decisions where the pilot estimates wrong on which is the less-risky choice to make. I think this is particularly true if you are pushing for performance - you make risk-reward tradeoffs all the time and many of those are based on a sample of experience that is just insufficient for the range of situations that randomness can throw at you - but they work out 99.9% of the time - you just don't know if it's 99.9% or 99.999% and over time that matters.
> > >
> > > Example: The Ethiopian 737MAX flight crew, faced with runaway trim and control forces too high to hold the nose up elected to re-engage the MCAS system to get electric trim back. It turned out not to help and lot of people died. It is possible that if they'd made the exact right choices at the exact right time they might've saved the aircraft, so is the fact that they failed '****-poor airmanship' or something more complex? They knew that MCAS-induced trim runaway was possible from the prior accident only weeks before. There was a much-criticized NYT op-ed that basically called the Ethiopian crew bad pilots. Most other experts said the situation was one that put so much stress on the crew that it's not reasonable to expect airmanship should be the correct solution to the problem, even if airmanship could've saved it. With perfect airmanship Sully could've gotten his A320 back to Laguardia, so was landing in the Hudson ****-poor airmanship? After all, he destroyed an airplane. I see more gray out there than you do and it give me pause.
> > >
> > > Which brings me to one final thought. There is also a human factors aspect of all of this. My personal experience is that there are a number of pilots with an extremely strong "internal locus of control". In their own estimation, they know exactly what the airplane will do, are excellent at reading the weather and always keep perfectly sufficient margins. Many (not all) of this personality type are hostile to feedback or thought that challenges that internal view. It's more than a handful of pilots I've encountered who, when confronted with feedback that they cut another pilot off in a thermal (or other similar behavior) responded with what amounted to "I'm fine - if you don't like it get out of my way". This, too, has given me pause, and in more than one case individuals have been encouraged to seek other forms of entertainment - particularly in the racing community. So, what happens to the pilot who is absolutely certain that his margins are good and he's read the weather right, configured the aircraft properly, etc. when a flying situation gets outside of their rock-solid belief system of what might happen? Do they go into denial or are they flexible in their view that they may have miscalculated something? Since many accidents are based on accumulations of decisions, the ability to re-estimate one's assumptions is a critical personality trait in breaking the potential accident chain.
> > >
> > > Skill certainly counts, but so does attitude. It might be more humility than skill that saves your life.
> > >
> > > Andy Blackburn
> > > 9B
> > >
> > > On Friday, November 29, 2019 at 9:41:14 AM UTC-8, 2G wrote:
> > > >
> > > > One point I will agree with you on is that you can't reduce all of your risks to zero - for example, if someone comes at you from your blind position with tunnel vision, it's damn hard to avoid a mid-air (it's happened to me, but I did avoid him). Nonetheless, the accident reports are replete with examples of ****-poor airmanship that are totally avoidable, including Masak's.
> > > >
> > > > Tom
> >
> > Andy,
> >
> > I am getting the strong sense of deflection from my basic premise. First off, I am not talking about a complex airliner accident which involves a clear design error on the part of the manufacturer (Boeing). I know Boeing engineers, and they are saying that Boeing screwed up. To blame the pilots for this is far more than a stretch.
> >
> > Second, the article I think you are referring to (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/12/business/ethiopian-airline-crash-school.html) made no such claim. In fact, it lauds the Ethiopian flight school. It only mentioned the copilots flight time (200 hr), which is a matter of fact.
> >
> > Third, trying to analyze the difference between 99.9% (1 in 1000) and 99.999% (1 in 100,000) is a fool's errand. In a good year, I might have 40 flights, 50 tops. 1 in 1000 means it will take forty to fifty years to occur, which MIGHT be once in my lifetime, at best. 1 in 100,000 means forget it: it's not important. I am talking about situations that have a reasonable chance of occurring on a flight, like 1 in 10 or 1 in 100. Take Masak's accident; as he was gliding toward the ridge line he had to see the ridge climbing on his canopy; what did he think the odds were of clearing the ridge, 1 in 2 if that? But he kept pressing on until he could see that he was BELOW the tree tops and had NO chance of clearing them. That delayed decision making process is why I categorize the accident cause as a CFIT; the stall/spin was merely a last second desperation maneuver with no chance of success.. This accident was TOTALLY AVOIDABLE, yet it happened to a high-time, skilled pilot flying in a familiar area!
> >
> > Other types of fatal avoidable accidents include hitting the only tree in field during a landout, flying IFR in the mountains and stall/spins in the pattern. Yes, all of these have occurred in the last two years to glider pilots, two to commercial pilots (one of those carrying a paying passenger).
> >
> > I don't want to over-think things here - it actually is a pretty basic concept. If you have poor stick and rudder skills, or poor decision making skills, or both, you are an accident waiting to happen.
> >
> > Tom
>
> Actually, the following NYT article written by William Langewiesche (son of Wolfgang, the author of "Stick and Rudder") is highly critical of the 737 Max pilots and blames them for both crashes: "What we had in the two downed airplanes was a textbook failure of airmanship".
> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/18/magazine/boeing-737-max-crashes.
>
> In this context, "poor airmanship" seems like a blame the victim catch-all that can be applied in any accident.

Your link is broken, but I think this is the correct one:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/18/magazine/boeing-737-max-crashes.html

Again, these 737 Max crashes involved a malfunctioning critical attitude control system, MCAS, that gliders don't have. You should really discuss this in the appropriate forum such as misc.transport.air-industry. He does make a telling comment, however:

In my own flying life, each of the four trim runaways I have experienced has been at most a 10-second problem — eight seconds to be surprised, and two seconds to flip the electric trim off. Who could be confused? When I mentioned this to Larry Rockliff, a former Canadian military and Airbus test pilot, he shrugged me off. “Look,� he said, “we know as a fact that half of airline pilots graduated in the bottom half of their class.�

Tom

[Branko Stojkovic]

> I will answer your question right after you answer this one: do you think Masak made a bad decision(s) that cost him his life?
>
> Tom

Tom,

Based on Tom Knauff's analysis of Peter Masak's fatal accident, I think it was most likely a poor decision that put him in situation in which his piloting skills could save him. Peter was flying in the 15m US nationals and was in a good position to win that day. Tom Knauff put it this way:

"He was obviously planning to fly to, and over Tussey ridge, into ridge lift and then south to a turnpoint. If he were successful, he would have been the only pilot to do so, and probably would have easily won the day. Only two other pilots flew to a nearby turnpoint, (Spruce Creek) and then returned towards the contest site."

Given the juicy reward that was waiting for him on the other side of Tussey ridge, I am guessing that Peter pushed his luck just a bit, reducing his safety margin. I am also guessing that 99 or 99.9 times out of a 100 he would have either made it over the ridge or would have been able to safely complete a 180° turn. I am also guessing that he encountered an unexpected sink and/or wind shear, which took away his diminished safety margin.

Would someone else in the same situation have been able to avoid stalling and made it out alive? Maybe, but I guess we'll never know for sure.

Branko
XYU

[Branko Stojkovic]

On Saturday, November 30, 2019 at 10:32:36 AM UTC-8, Phil Plane wrote:
> On Saturday, 30 November 2019 21:30:21 UTC+13, Branko Stojkovic wrote:
>
> > With regards to the stick-and-rudder skills, the matter is pretty straight forward. In general, there is a direct correlation/causation between the flying experience and the stick-and-rudder skill level, i.e., the beginners have limited skills and the experts have excellent skills. Furthermore, most pilots can fairly accurately assess their own stick-and-rudder skills. A yearly check ride with an instructor provides a useful feedback about the areas that need improvement.
>
> Well I would take issue with that statement. I fly with a wide range of pilots from a wide range of backgrounds and have learned to be careful with generalisations.
>
> I have flown with experienced competition pilots with thousands of hours who I would not be comfortable with in a tricky situation. I have flown with pilots who have barely finished their training with a few hundred hours who I wouldn't want to take control from for fear of embarrassing myself because they flew so precisely and correctly. I don't even try to guess in advance which is which any more. I wait for the evidence.
>
> So I would suggest that good handling skills can be learned relatively quickly, but that they don't just get better with repetition. You need to actively try to improve.
>
> Many 'experienced' pilots have been doing the same thing over an over and have embedded bad habits or lazy handling into their flying.
>
> The biggest difference I see is many low time pilots know they haven't learned enough yet and want to get better.
>
> When pilots just want to get by, they should probably think of moving to an activity that doesn't punish mistakes quite as hard.
>
> > Okay, so what about them decision-making skills, which also vary among the glider pilot population? It is safe to say that in this case there is a much weaker correlation between the flying experience and the skill level. It seems that the decision-making skills are much more related to the psychological makeup of the pilot and makes things much more complicated and causes several intractable problems.
>
> This is the major factor. If you come up with a solution, let me know.
>
> --
> Phil Plane

Phil,

I totally agree with you because I have seen it for myself. That's why I started by saying "In general…". In any case, my main point was that the stick-and-rudder skills are much better understood and appreciated, and much easier to rate, than the soft skills of decision-making.

One important thing I didn't say in my post is this: Once your stick-and-rudder skills are good enough for you to fly solo, it is solely up to your decision making to keep you out of situations that would require higher piloting skills than the ones you possess. For that reason alone I would say that poor decision-making is the root cause of most accidents.

As for the solution, I can only tell you what worked for me. When I analyze my flying, I try to identify things that I am doing wrong, i.e., poor decisions that I've made. I also consider if my poor decision was a one-off, or if there may be a pattern. Lastly, and most importantly, I I try to figure out the reasons behind my making these types poor decisions.

For example, I made some poor decisions in the past because I am generally a nice guy who likes to please others. Luckily none of these resulted in an accident, but one came frighteningly close, and it was only my low altitude flying skills that saved my ass, the ass of the guy in my rear cockpit (who I was trying to please) and the asses of a couple of guys on the ground. I have since learned to recognize this pattern in my thinking and, for the most part, I have been successful in avoiding even minor safety infractions in order to please someone.

The most difficult part in this is looking at yourself with all of your shields down, warts and all. If this exercise doesn't make you uncomfortable, then you are not doing it right. Once you get better at it, it becomes much easier to admit to yourself and to other people that you have flaws. It also makes learning from other's mistakes and criticism much more effective.

Branko
XYU

[2G]

On Saturday, November 30, 2019 at 1:20:35 PM UTC-8, Branko Stojkovic wrote:
> > I will answer your question right after you answer this one: do you think Masak made a bad decision(s) that cost him his life?
> >
> > Tom
>
> Tom,
>
> Based on Tom Knauff's analysis of Peter Masak's fatal accident, I think it was most likely a poor decision that put him in situation in which his piloting skills could save him. Peter was flying in the 15m US nationals and was in a good position to win that day. Tom Knauff put it this way:
>
> "He was obviously planning to fly to, and over Tussey ridge, into ridge lift and then south to a turnpoint. If he were successful, he would have been the only pilot to do so, and probably would have easily won the day. Only two other pilots flew to a nearby turnpoint, (Spruce Creek) and then returned towards the contest site."
>
> Given the juicy reward that was waiting for him on the other side of Tussey ridge, I am guessing that Peter pushed his luck just a bit, reducing his safety margin. I am also guessing that 99 or 99.9 times out of a 100 he would have either made it over the ridge or would have been able to safely complete a 180° turn. I am also guessing that he encountered an unexpected sink and/or wind shear, which took away his diminished safety margin.
>
> Would someone else in the same situation have been able to avoid stalling and made it out alive? Maybe, but I guess we'll never know for sure.
>
> Branko
> XYU

Branko,

The answer is a definite yes. Anytime you landout there is the very real potential (1 in 10, not 1 in 100) of a mishap, and I have had such an incident. In fact, I listed it explicitly in this thread. Did you not see it?

Tom Knauff said Masak "pushed his luck." You will not find "luck" listed in any flight training manual, so Knauff must have meant something else. I personally listened to Knauff describe his world distance record flight he made. He related how himself and three other very experienced pilots were trying to make it the last stretch back to the Ridge Soaring. They all committed to flying into an area where they had no landing option; if they didn't find some lift, remember this the end of a very long day, they ALL would have landed in the trees. Nobody commented on this possibility on the radio, but they all were aware of it, yet they did it anyhow. Well, one of them found some lift and they all got away with it, and Knauff got his world record flight. He obviously "pushed his luck" beyond any reasonable limit. I am more blunt: he made a very bad decision and got away with it. Masak did the same thing, but didn't get away with it. By any measure, both incidents are examples of "****-poor airmanship" where an unsuccessful outcome results in death(s).

So, part of solution is to analyze your flight afterwards and identify any decision that is likely a poor one:
1. What factors led up to the poor decision.
2. What options did you reject that would have been a better choice.
3. How you can change your future decision making to prevent a re-occurrence.
We all make bad decisions - the better pilots learn from them so as not to repeat them.

Tom

[Branko Stojkovic]

Tom,

I think we are in agreement. It's just that sometimes the debate on RAS gets a bit heated, at least for my taste. To quote Ursula Le Guin: The soundest fact may fail or prevail in the style of its telling.

Branko
XYU

[2G]

On Saturday, November 30, 2019 at 3:18:55 PM UTC-8, Branko Stojkovic wrote:
> Tom,
>
> I think we are in agreement. It's just that sometimes the debate on RAS gets a bit heated, at least for my taste. To quote Ursula Le Guin: The soundest fact may fail or prevail in the style of its telling.
>
> Branko
> XYU

Branko,

You right-on there; I thought I was just making a simple observation that all could agree with, then it degenerated to the point that people were actually defending poor airmanship and cheering for luck. Go figure...

Tom

[[email protected]]

Actually we were acknowledging luck as a factor in glider fatalities and suggesting that denial and overconfidence are dangerous as well.
Dale

[2G]

On Saturday, November 30, 2019 at 4:58:27 PM UTC-8, wrote:
> Actually we were acknowledging luck as a factor in glider fatalities and suggesting that denial and overconfidence are dangerous as well.
> Dale

....all of which fall into the category of poor airmanship (assuming you are depending upon "luck" for a satisfactory outcome), and are preventable. This should be good news for those of us concerned about our safety. Many power accidents are the result of "get-home-itis" which is bad prioritizing of outcomes.

Tom

[[email protected]]

> ...all of which fall into the category of poor airmanship (assuming you are depending upon "luck" for a satisfactory outcome), and are preventable.

OK, Tom, this is from one of your previous posts in this thread:

I honestly don't understand the rational here. It seems that the majority of you think you are alive only by luck! I can assure you that that isn't the case. You can't train a pilot to be lucky, only skilled. When someone once told me that I was lucky in life, I replied "I make my own luck."

Tom

Make up your effin' mind.

[2G]

On Saturday, November 30, 2019 at 7:49:54 PM UTC-8, wrote:
> > ...all of which fall into the category of poor airmanship (assuming you are depending upon "luck" for a satisfactory outcome), and are preventable..
>
> OK, Tom, this is from one of your previous posts in this thread:
>
> I honestly don't understand the rational here. It seems that the majority of you think you are alive only by luck! I can assure you that that isn't the case. You can't train a pilot to be lucky, only skilled. When someone once told me that I was lucky in life, I replied "I make my own luck."
>
> Tom
>
> Make up your effin' mind.

Mark,

I did explain that, but let's try again. You can make your own luck by inspecting potential landing fields from the ground, rather than from 5,000 ft. You can make your own luck by reviewing all NOTAMs in the area and knowing what runways are out of service. You can make your own luck by clearing all turns rather than depending upon other aircraft to stay out of your way. You can make your own luck by adding extra altitude (say 25%) to the required glide over unlandable terrain. You can make your own luck carefully inspecting your glider prior to each flight. You can make your own luck by monitoring weather reports while flying and landing at an alternate airport. I do all of these and more - you should to.

It gets down to increasing the odds of a successful outcome. I use the same principal in all aspects of my life. I found out that I had prostate cancer, but only after insisting on tests (PSA and a biopsy) to prove it one way or the other. After finding out that I had it, I concluded that the upside (living) outweighed the downside of a radical prostatectomy, so I had it removed and am cancer free after 3+ years. It did cost me one season of flying, but that was a reasonable trade-off. I definitely "made my own luck" on that one!

Tom

[[email protected]]

Tom,
It’s semantics my friend. “Luck (by definition) is good or bad fortune brought about by chance and not by ones own actions�. So one cannot “make ones own luck�. I get what you’re saying and, of course, agree that good airmanship and good judgment increase safety absolutely.
Dale

[Chris Behm]

Geeze, what the heck happened to the original posters topic?
I thought he wanted to start a "swear jar" for risky pilot decisions.
Happy and safe Holidays all of you.

Kind Regards,
Target

[2G]

On Saturday, November 30, 2019 at 10:30:21 PM UTC-8, wrote:
> Tom,
> It’s semantics my friend. “Luck (by definition) is good or bad fortune brought about by chance and not by ones own actions�.. So one cannot “make ones own luck�. I get what you’re saying and, of course, agree that good airmanship and good judgment increase safety absolutely.
> Dale

Well, that may be your definition, but it isn't mine. Luck will often be affected by your actions; your "luck" of a glider accident will be markedly improved if you don't fly at all. Your "luck" of landing out will be markedly improved if you only fly locally. Your "luck" of a mid-air will be markedly improved if you fly alone, and markedly reduced if you fly in contests. So I don't buy the theory that luck is not affected by "one's own actions." Luck only means that the outcome of a particular event can only be described with a probability function, not that you have no control over that function.

Again, you are over-thinking this - it's pretty basic: do more smart things and fewer dumb things to stay safe.

Tom

[Tango Eight]

I feel this sudden urge to read Lewis Carroll.

T8

[[email protected]]

This thread has definitely outlived its usefullness.
Luck vs proper airmanship, stick n rudder skills vs mental state, forward thinking vs presumption, this horse has been flogged enough.

Fly thoughtful, improve/add flight skills every year, progress don’t digress, fly and enjoy your bird! If you want to take risks, thats your business, one mans risky behavior is not necessarily anothers. Just as long as your risk or presumption does not affect my health flying in the gaggle with you. We can let darwinism have its course.

[Andy Blackburn[_3_]]

Tom,

I take your points. I think if we sat down and went through accident reports together we'd probably agree more than we disagree on the degree to which pilot error is a significant factor. Still, a lot of very good stick and rudder guys end up in very bad or fatal accidents.

My Dad broke his back hitting power lines strung between two trees on the approach end of a road after experiencing 10 knots of sink for a long while on final glide into Hobbs at the Standard Class Nationals in the 80s. Another very skilled fighter pilot and US WGC Team pilot on that same day flew through the same bad air leading to his only landable option requiring him to put the glider between the high wires and the low wires on the electrical poles at the airpot boundary (for a long time he had a picture of the event above his desk at home as a reminder - maybe he still does). I actually knew another fighter pilot/glider pilot who hit a tree in a field and was killed by the spar when the wing came apart - it was a tight situation and there were a whole series of decisions that put him in a field with a tree in it. He thought he could maneuver around it...but couldn't. Those all end up as pilot error in one way or another I suppose - but with a lot of extenuating circumstances - who counts on 5 miles of 10-knot sink no matter which way you go? Okay maybe that's not the typical situation for a stall/spin turning final in a Grob at the home airport, but it happens a fair amount I think.

The good advice is maintain your margins and try to think ahead. I just add to that the somewhat paranoid idea that everything could go to hell in ways that I hadn't imagined and add more margin - maybe more than the average pilot. I hope that it helps me stay safe, but I remain open to the idea that I can make a bad assumption, lose my focus or that my margins might be insufficient in some circumstance.

Mostly I fly airport to airport - but of course I have not inspected every airport in the waypoint database and in the desert that can sometimes present a problem. Occasionally I'll commit to a field landing if I know the area, but sometime your out is 20-30 miles away and I have not walked every field in the task area - though I walk my share.

The thing that always gets my attention is when the only lift is weak on a ridge line and the alternative is to land in a field down in the valley do I try to work it or not. Is it really safer to put it in a field? Figure 8's transitioning to circling, keeping an eye on the wind, keeping the speed up, adjusting for the drift while looking over your shoulder before you commit to the downwind turn into the ridge. It's a high workload situation and it has caught a fair number of very experienced pilots that I respected. Knowing that makes me feel very humble.

Okay, that's it for this afternoon. Back to other things...

Andy


On Friday, November 29, 2019 at 2:53:54 PM UTC-8, 2G wrote:
> On Friday, November 29, 2019 at 12:44:05 PM UTC-8, Andy Blackburn wrote:
> > I think you have a much stronger sense that you are master of your destiny than many of us. I've certainly read the stall-spin stories of pilots in benign-handling trainers on a clear, windless day simply misjudging the turn to final by getting too low and ruddering the turn until they depart the airplane. It happens and it's about as close to 100% pilot error and poor airmanship as you can get. There are a number of those in the public record. I just think many cases are more complex than that and sit at the end of an accumulation of decisions where the pilot estimates wrong on which is the less-risky choice to make. I think this is particularly true if you are pushing for performance - you make risk-reward tradeoffs all the time and many of those are based on a sample of experience that is just insufficient for the range of situations that randomness can throw at you - but they work out 99.9% of the time - you just don't know if it's 99.9% or 99.999% and over time that matters.
> >
> > Example: The Ethiopian 737MAX flight crew, faced with runaway trim and control forces too high to hold the nose up elected to re-engage the MCAS system to get electric trim back. It turned out not to help and lot of people died. It is possible that if they'd made the exact right choices at the exact right time they might've saved the aircraft, so is the fact that they failed '****-poor airmanship' or something more complex? They knew that MCAS-induced trim runaway was possible from the prior accident only weeks before. There was a much-criticized NYT op-ed that basically called the Ethiopian crew bad pilots. Most other experts said the situation was one that put so much stress on the crew that it's not reasonable to expect airmanship should be the correct solution to the problem, even if airmanship could've saved it. With perfect airmanship Sully could've gotten his A320 back to Laguardia, so was landing in the Hudson ****-poor airmanship? After all, he destroyed an airplane. I see more gray out there than you do and it give me pause.
> >
> > Which brings me to one final thought. There is also a human factors aspect of all of this. My personal experience is that there are a number of pilots with an extremely strong "internal locus of control". In their own estimation, they know exactly what the airplane will do, are excellent at reading the weather and always keep perfectly sufficient margins. Many (not all) of this personality type are hostile to feedback or thought that challenges that internal view. It's more than a handful of pilots I've encountered who, when confronted with feedback that they cut another pilot off in a thermal (or other similar behavior) responded with what amounted to "I'm fine - if you don't like it get out of my way". This, too, has given me pause, and in more than one case individuals have been encouraged to seek other forms of entertainment - particularly in the racing community. So, what happens to the pilot who is absolutely certain that his margins are good and he's read the weather right, configured the aircraft properly, etc. when a flying situation gets outside of their rock-solid belief system of what might happen? Do they go into denial or are they flexible in their view that they may have miscalculated something? Since many accidents are based on accumulations of decisions, the ability to re-estimate one's assumptions is a critical personality trait in breaking the potential accident chain.
> >
> > Skill certainly counts, but so does attitude. It might be more humility than skill that saves your life.
> >
> > Andy Blackburn
> > 9B
> >
> > On Friday, November 29, 2019 at 9:41:14 AM UTC-8, 2G wrote:
> > >
> > > One point I will agree with you on is that you can't reduce all of your risks to zero - for example, if someone comes at you from your blind position with tunnel vision, it's damn hard to avoid a mid-air (it's happened to me, but I did avoid him). Nonetheless, the accident reports are replete with examples of ****-poor airmanship that are totally avoidable, including Masak's.
> > >
> > > Tom
>
> Andy,
>
> I am getting the strong sense of deflection from my basic premise. First off, I am not talking about a complex airliner accident which involves a clear design error on the part of the manufacturer (Boeing). I know Boeing engineers, and they are saying that Boeing screwed up. To blame the pilots for this is far more than a stretch.
>
> Second, the article I think you are referring to (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/12/business/ethiopian-airline-crash-school.html) made no such claim. In fact, it lauds the Ethiopian flight school. It only mentioned the copilots flight time (200 hr), which is a matter of fact.
>
> Third, trying to analyze the difference between 99.9% (1 in 1000) and 99.999% (1 in 100,000) is a fool's errand. In a good year, I might have 40 flights, 50 tops. 1 in 1000 means it will take forty to fifty years to occur, which MIGHT be once in my lifetime, at best. 1 in 100,000 means forget it: it's not important. I am talking about situations that have a reasonable chance of occurring on a flight, like 1 in 10 or 1 in 100. Take Masak's accident; as he was gliding toward the ridge line he had to see the ridge climbing on his canopy; what did he think the odds were of clearing the ridge, 1 in 2 if that? But he kept pressing on until he could see that he was BELOW the tree tops and had NO chance of clearing them. That delayed decision making process is why I categorize the accident cause as a CFIT; the stall/spin was merely a last second desperation maneuver with no chance of success. This accident was TOTALLY AVOIDABLE, yet it happened to a high-time, skilled pilot flying in a familiar area!
>
> Other types of fatal avoidable accidents include hitting the only tree in field during a landout, flying IFR in the mountains and stall/spins in the pattern. Yes, all of these have occurred in the last two years to glider pilots, two to commercial pilots (one of those carrying a paying passenger).
>
> I don't want to over-think things here - it actually is a pretty basic concept. If you have poor stick and rudder skills, or poor decision making skills, or both, you are an accident waiting to happen.
>
> Tom

[Jonathan St. Cloud]

On Saturday, November 30, 2019 at 11:26:21 PM UTC-8, 2G wrote:
> On Saturday, November 30, 2019 at 10:30:21 PM UTC-8, wrote:
> > Tom,
> > It’s semantics my friend. “Luck (by definition) is good or bad fortune brought about by chance and not by ones own actions�. So one cannot “make ones own luck�. I get what you’re saying and, of course, agree that good airmanship and good judgment increase safety absolutely.
> > Dale
>
> Well, that may be your definition, but it isn't mine. Luck will often be affected by your actions; your "luck" of a glider accident will be markedly improved if you don't fly at all. Your "luck" of landing out will be markedly improved if you only fly locally. Your "luck" of a mid-air will be markedly improved if you fly alone, and markedly reduced if you fly in contests.. So I don't buy the theory that luck is not affected by "one's own actions.." Luck only means that the outcome of a particular event can only be described with a probability function, not that you have no control over that function.
>
> Again, you are over-thinking this - it's pretty basic: do more smart things and fewer dumb things to stay safe.
>
> Tom

Make your own luck, or luck of the draw :
https://www.fomento.gob.es/recursos_mfom/038_2011_a_eng.pdf

[2G]

On Sunday, December 1, 2019 at 3:57:19 PM UTC-8, Andy Blackburn wrote:
> Tom,
>
> I take your points. I think if we sat down and went through accident reports together we'd probably agree more than we disagree on the degree to which pilot error is a significant factor. Still, a lot of very good stick and rudder guys end up in very bad or fatal accidents.
>
> My Dad broke his back hitting power lines strung between two trees on the approach end of a road after experiencing 10 knots of sink for a long while on final glide into Hobbs at the Standard Class Nationals in the 80s. Another very skilled fighter pilot and US WGC Team pilot on that same day flew through the same bad air leading to his only landable option requiring him to put the glider between the high wires and the low wires on the electrical poles at the airpot boundary (for a long time he had a picture of the event above his desk at home as a reminder - maybe he still does). I actually knew another fighter pilot/glider pilot who hit a tree in a field and was killed by the spar when the wing came apart - it was a tight situation and there were a whole series of decisions that put him in a field with a tree in it. He thought he could maneuver around it...but couldn't. Those all end up as pilot error in one way or another I suppose - but with a lot of extenuating circumstances - who counts on 5 miles of 10-knot sink no matter which way you go? Okay maybe that's not the typical situation for a stall/spin turning final in a Grob at the home airport, but it happens a fair amount I think.
>
> The good advice is maintain your margins and try to think ahead. I just add to that the somewhat paranoid idea that everything could go to hell in ways that I hadn't imagined and add more margin - maybe more than the average pilot. I hope that it helps me stay safe, but I remain open to the idea that I can make a bad assumption, lose my focus or that my margins might be insufficient in some circumstance.
>
> Mostly I fly airport to airport - but of course I have not inspected every airport in the waypoint database and in the desert that can sometimes present a problem. Occasionally I'll commit to a field landing if I know the area, but sometime your out is 20-30 miles away and I have not walked every field in the task area - though I walk my share.
>
> The thing that always gets my attention is when the only lift is weak on a ridge line and the alternative is to land in a field down in the valley do I try to work it or not. Is it really safer to put it in a field? Figure 8's transitioning to circling, keeping an eye on the wind, keeping the speed up, adjusting for the drift while looking over your shoulder before you commit to the downwind turn into the ridge. It's a high workload situation and it has caught a fair number of very experienced pilots that I respected. Knowing that makes me feel very humble.
>
> Okay, that's it for this afternoon. Back to other things...
>
> Andy
>
>
> On Friday, November 29, 2019 at 2:53:54 PM UTC-8, 2G wrote:
> > On Friday, November 29, 2019 at 12:44:05 PM UTC-8, Andy Blackburn wrote:
> > > I think you have a much stronger sense that you are master of your destiny than many of us. I've certainly read the stall-spin stories of pilots in benign-handling trainers on a clear, windless day simply misjudging the turn to final by getting too low and ruddering the turn until they depart the airplane. It happens and it's about as close to 100% pilot error and poor airmanship as you can get. There are a number of those in the public record. I just think many cases are more complex than that and sit at the end of an accumulation of decisions where the pilot estimates wrong on which is the less-risky choice to make. I think this is particularly true if you are pushing for performance - you make risk-reward tradeoffs all the time and many of those are based on a sample of experience that is just insufficient for the range of situations that randomness can throw at you - but they work out 99.9% of the time - you just don't know if it's 99.9% or 99.999% and over time that matters.
> > >
> > > Example: The Ethiopian 737MAX flight crew, faced with runaway trim and control forces too high to hold the nose up elected to re-engage the MCAS system to get electric trim back. It turned out not to help and lot of people died. It is possible that if they'd made the exact right choices at the exact right time they might've saved the aircraft, so is the fact that they failed '****-poor airmanship' or something more complex? They knew that MCAS-induced trim runaway was possible from the prior accident only weeks before. There was a much-criticized NYT op-ed that basically called the Ethiopian crew bad pilots. Most other experts said the situation was one that put so much stress on the crew that it's not reasonable to expect airmanship should be the correct solution to the problem, even if airmanship could've saved it. With perfect airmanship Sully could've gotten his A320 back to Laguardia, so was landing in the Hudson ****-poor airmanship? After all, he destroyed an airplane. I see more gray out there than you do and it give me pause.
> > >
> > > Which brings me to one final thought. There is also a human factors aspect of all of this. My personal experience is that there are a number of pilots with an extremely strong "internal locus of control". In their own estimation, they know exactly what the airplane will do, are excellent at reading the weather and always keep perfectly sufficient margins. Many (not all) of this personality type are hostile to feedback or thought that challenges that internal view. It's more than a handful of pilots I've encountered who, when confronted with feedback that they cut another pilot off in a thermal (or other similar behavior) responded with what amounted to "I'm fine - if you don't like it get out of my way". This, too, has given me pause, and in more than one case individuals have been encouraged to seek other forms of entertainment - particularly in the racing community. So, what happens to the pilot who is absolutely certain that his margins are good and he's read the weather right, configured the aircraft properly, etc. when a flying situation gets outside of their rock-solid belief system of what might happen? Do they go into denial or are they flexible in their view that they may have miscalculated something? Since many accidents are based on accumulations of decisions, the ability to re-estimate one's assumptions is a critical personality trait in breaking the potential accident chain.
> > >
> > > Skill certainly counts, but so does attitude. It might be more humility than skill that saves your life.
> > >
> > > Andy Blackburn
> > > 9B
> > >
> > > On Friday, November 29, 2019 at 9:41:14 AM UTC-8, 2G wrote:
> > > >
> > > > One point I will agree with you on is that you can't reduce all of your risks to zero - for example, if someone comes at you from your blind position with tunnel vision, it's damn hard to avoid a mid-air (it's happened to me, but I did avoid him). Nonetheless, the accident reports are replete with examples of ****-poor airmanship that are totally avoidable, including Masak's.
> > > >
> > > > Tom
> >
> > Andy,
> >
> > I am getting the strong sense of deflection from my basic premise. First off, I am not talking about a complex airliner accident which involves a clear design error on the part of the manufacturer (Boeing). I know Boeing engineers, and they are saying that Boeing screwed up. To blame the pilots for this is far more than a stretch.
> >
> > Second, the article I think you are referring to (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/12/business/ethiopian-airline-crash-school.html) made no such claim. In fact, it lauds the Ethiopian flight school. It only mentioned the copilots flight time (200 hr), which is a matter of fact.
> >
> > Third, trying to analyze the difference between 99.9% (1 in 1000) and 99.999% (1 in 100,000) is a fool's errand. In a good year, I might have 40 flights, 50 tops. 1 in 1000 means it will take forty to fifty years to occur, which MIGHT be once in my lifetime, at best. 1 in 100,000 means forget it: it's not important. I am talking about situations that have a reasonable chance of occurring on a flight, like 1 in 10 or 1 in 100. Take Masak's accident; as he was gliding toward the ridge line he had to see the ridge climbing on his canopy; what did he think the odds were of clearing the ridge, 1 in 2 if that? But he kept pressing on until he could see that he was BELOW the tree tops and had NO chance of clearing them. That delayed decision making process is why I categorize the accident cause as a CFIT; the stall/spin was merely a last second desperation maneuver with no chance of success.. This accident was TOTALLY AVOIDABLE, yet it happened to a high-time, skilled pilot flying in a familiar area!
> >
> > Other types of fatal avoidable accidents include hitting the only tree in field during a landout, flying IFR in the mountains and stall/spins in the pattern. Yes, all of these have occurred in the last two years to glider pilots, two to commercial pilots (one of those carrying a paying passenger).
> >
> > I don't want to over-think things here - it actually is a pretty basic concept. If you have poor stick and rudder skills, or poor decision making skills, or both, you are an accident waiting to happen.
> >
> > Tom

Andy,

I just looked at the fatal accidents for the last two years to find a common thread. That thread was ****-poor airmanship. Is that to say that there are exceptions that prove the rule? The answer is yes, there are ALWAYS exceptions, but I don't fixate on them to the point of losing sight of the principal conclusion: good airmanship goes a long ways in preventing accidents. I honestly don't understand why this is so controversial, everybody should be saying "Yup, that's a good point."

Where I fly in Nevada there are few airports and they are a long way apart, and the majority of those I wouldn't attempt landing on anyway. Fields are actually a safer option. But ANY field would be better than the brush. I have another saying: you can either make the decision, or the decision will be made for you, and you probably won't be pleased with the outcome. Waiting until the last moment to make the decision is not a good idea.

Tom

[2G]

On Sunday, December 1, 2019 at 6:49:40 PM UTC-8, Jonathan St. Cloud wrote:
> On Saturday, November 30, 2019 at 11:26:21 PM UTC-8, 2G wrote:
> > On Saturday, November 30, 2019 at 10:30:21 PM UTC-8, wrote:
> > > Tom,
> > > It’s semantics my friend. “Luck (by definition) is good or bad fortune brought about by chance and not by ones own actions�. So one cannot “make ones own luck�. I get what you’re saying and, of course, agree that good airmanship and good judgment increase safety absolutely.
> > > Dale
> >
> > Well, that may be your definition, but it isn't mine. Luck will often be affected by your actions; your "luck" of a glider accident will be markedly improved if you don't fly at all. Your "luck" of landing out will be markedly improved if you only fly locally. Your "luck" of a mid-air will be markedly improved if you fly alone, and markedly reduced if you fly in contests. So I don't buy the theory that luck is not affected by "one's own actions." Luck only means that the outcome of a particular event can only be described with a probability function, not that you have no control over that function.
> >
> > Again, you are over-thinking this - it's pretty basic: do more smart things and fewer dumb things to stay safe.
> >
> > Tom
>
> Make your own luck, or luck of the draw :
> https://www.fomento.gob.es/recursos_mfom/038_2011_a_eng.pdf

Yeah, Sully hit some birds, too, and it took down an A-320. Sometimes you just roll snake eyes.

Tom

[[email protected]]

Tell us more about this 'Airmanship' religion. I'm sure many of us here are interested in salvation. Does Airmanship have a worthy god? Hymnals? Tithing? Do we have to wear silly dresses or silly hats?

[[email protected]]

On Monday, December 2, 2019 at 6:38:15 AM UTC-7, wrote:
> Tell us more about this 'Airmanship' religion. I'm sure many of us here are interested in salvation. Does Airmanship have a worthy god? Hymnals? Tithing? Do we have to wear silly dresses or silly hats?

It is an orthodox sect of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (https://www.spaghettimonster.org/), also known as the "Pastafarians." Worshipping "His Noodly Goodness," followers have a tendency to wear colanders as hats and revere pirates.

[Howard Banks]

And to prefer to fly nothing more modern than the Iron Flugel.




At 14:56 02 December 2019, wrote:
>On Monday, December 2, 2019 at 6:38:15 AM UTC-7,
wrote:
>> Tell us more about this 'Airmanship' religion. I'm sure many of us
here
>are interested in salvation. Does Airmanship have a worthy god?
Hymnals?
>Tithing? Do we have to wear silly dresses or silly hats?
>
>It is an orthodox sect of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster
>(https://www.spaghettimonster.org/), also known as the "Pastafarians."
>Worshipping "His Noodly Goodness," followers have a tendency to wear
>colanders as hats and revere pirates.
>

[Tango Eight]

On Monday, December 2, 2019 at 8:38:15 AM UTC-5, wrote:
> Tell us more about this 'Airmanship' religion. I'm sure many of us here are interested in salvation. Does Airmanship have a worthy god? Hymnals? Tithing? Do we have to wear silly dresses or silly hats?

Tom explained himself adequately. He's a bit hard to parse because he insists on defining commonly used words and terms differently than the rest of the world (hence the Lewis Carroll reference I made earlier), but I think anyone can get the gist now.

It's clear to me now that what he means by "making my own luck" is in fact "not trusting to luck". What he means by CFIT is in fact "Controlled flight into a situation that any sensible pilot would avoid".

T8

[rj]

On Monday, December 2, 2019 at 8:38:15 AM UTC-5, wrote:
> Tell us more about this 'Airmanship' religion. I'm sure many of us here are interested in salvation. Does Airmanship have a worthy god? Hymnals? Tithing? Do we have to wear silly dresses or silly hats?

Religion is a matter of faith.

Airmanship is a matter of science.

Take your pick.

[2G]

On Monday, December 2, 2019 at 8:13:21 AM UTC-8, Tango Eight wrote:
> On Monday, December 2, 2019 at 8:38:15 AM UTC-5, wrote:
> > Tell us more about this 'Airmanship' religion. I'm sure many of us here are interested in salvation. Does Airmanship have a worthy god? Hymnals? Tithing? Do we have to wear silly dresses or silly hats?
>
> Tom explained himself adequately. He's a bit hard to parse because he insists on defining commonly used words and terms differently than the rest of the world (hence the Lewis Carroll reference I made earlier), but I think anyone can get the gist now.
>
> It's clear to me now that what he means by "making my own luck" is in fact "not trusting to luck". What he means by CFIT is in fact "Controlled flight into a situation that any sensible pilot would avoid".
>
> T8

I won't disagree with that, but "making your own luck" means manipulating circumstances to increase the odds of a good outcome. Things as simple as getting multiple weather reports and viewing NOTAMs in your region fall into this category. Also is is walking potential landing fields. In other words, making your own luck is evaluating potential risks and taking measures, including not flying, to mitigate those risks.

Now this discussion has degenerated into a ridiculous belittling of fundamental airmanship. Apparently, they don't even get the mandatory weather briefing before flying. I can only hope that none of those individuals are CFIGs.

Tom

[2G]

On Monday, December 2, 2019 at 10:38:36 AM UTC-8, rj wrote:
> On Monday, December 2, 2019 at 8:38:15 AM UTC-5, wrote:
> > Tell us more about this 'Airmanship' religion. I'm sure many of us here are interested in salvation. Does Airmanship have a worthy god? Hymnals? Tithing? Do we have to wear silly dresses or silly hats?
>
> Religion is a matter of faith.
>
> Airmanship is a matter of science.
>
> Take your pick.

Here is how the FAA defines airmanship:

Airmanship is a broad term that includes a sound knowledge of and
experience with the principles of flight, the knowledge,
experience, and ability to operate an airplane with
competence and precision both on the ground and in the air,
and the application of sound judgment that results in optimal
operational safety and efficiency.

https://www.faa.gov/regulations_policies/handbooks_manuals/aviation/airplane_handbook/media/03_afh_ch1.pdf

[[email protected]]

On Monday, December 2, 2019 at 1:38:36 PM UTC-5, rj wrote:
> On Monday, December 2, 2019 at 8:38:15 AM UTC-5, wrote:
> > Tell us more about this 'Airmanship' religion. I'm sure many of us here are interested in salvation. Does Airmanship have a worthy god? Hymnals? Tithing? Do we have to wear silly dresses or silly hats?
>
> Religion is a matter of faith.
>
> Airmanship is a matter of science.
>
> Take your pick.

Belief in airmanship excepting you from the risk pool is a leap of faith greater than belief in God.

[2G]

On Monday, December 2, 2019 at 11:39:39 AM UTC-8, wrote:
> On Monday, December 2, 2019 at 1:38:36 PM UTC-5, rj wrote:
> > On Monday, December 2, 2019 at 8:38:15 AM UTC-5, wrote:
> > > Tell us more about this 'Airmanship' religion. I'm sure many of us here are interested in salvation. Does Airmanship have a worthy god? Hymnals? Tithing? Do we have to wear silly dresses or silly hats?
> >
> > Religion is a matter of faith.
> >
> > Airmanship is a matter of science.
> >
> > Take your pick.
>
> Belief in airmanship excepting you from the risk pool is a leap of faith greater than belief in God.

Tell that to the experts at the FAA and CFIGs. At least you confirmed that you ARE NOT a CFIG, thank God!

Tom

[Tom[_21_]]

My Irish kin have a saying “luck favors the prepared�. Just thought I’d leave that here and come back and see what it provoked many posts from now.

Regards, Tom

[[email protected]]

On Friday, November 29, 2019 at 7:51:47 PM UTC-8, 2G wrote:
> On Friday, November 29, 2019 at 7:08:21 PM UTC-8, wrote:
> > > No, I'm sorry, but you DON'T get it.
> > >
> > > Tom
> >
> > Tom don't you want others to have the same safety level you have? Let us all come together in the cult of airmanship. Believe and immortality is yours.
>
> No, I'm sorry, you DON'T get it.
>
> Tom

I know I don't get it! I've read through this entire thread and I still cannot figure out what your point is exactly. Could you clarify it in one paragraph so we all understand what exactly we are discussing? As best I can understand it... we all agree that poor airmanship happens, and that it is a major cause of accidents. I think you have also agreed that there is at least some (perhaps tiny) percentage of incidents that are not due to poor airmanship. Near as I can tell the rest of us are talking about out how to minimize our own personal probability of being the cause of an accident to ourselves or others while flying a glider. I'm having a hard time understanding why it matters that we determine if the total percentage of poor airmanship is 75%, 95% or 99.999% the cause... And a more minor point, I know that my airmanship is not even close to 95% perfect (I've been flying long enough to have proof) and I think I'm pretty hot **** :) Are you saying you have perfected airmanship to the degree that you have eliminated that risk for yourself entirely and that other considerations are not worth analyzing because the overwhelming cause of accidents is poor airmanship? I ask honestly and without malice. Frustrated perhaps, but honestly.

[[email protected]]

> Tell that to the experts at the FAA and CFIGs. At least you confirmed that you ARE NOT a CFIG, thank God!
>
> Tom

I did? Or did you just make a penmanship err postmanship error based on faulty assumption fueled by preconceived notions? That you seem to think you are incapable of making a similar cognitive airmanship error while flying is scary for you.

[2G]

On Monday, December 2, 2019 at 10:55:38 PM UTC-8, wrote:
> On Friday, November 29, 2019 at 7:51:47 PM UTC-8, 2G wrote:
> > On Friday, November 29, 2019 at 7:08:21 PM UTC-8, wrote:
> > > > No, I'm sorry, but you DON'T get it.
> > > >
> > > > Tom
> > >
> > > Tom don't you want others to have the same safety level you have? Let us all come together in the cult of airmanship. Believe and immortality is yours.
> >
> > No, I'm sorry, you DON'T get it.
> >
> > Tom
>
> I know I don't get it! I've read through this entire thread and I still cannot figure out what your point is exactly. Could you clarify it in one paragraph so we all understand what exactly we are discussing? As best I can understand it... we all agree that poor airmanship happens, and that it is a major cause of accidents. I think you have also agreed that there is at least some (perhaps tiny) percentage of incidents that are not due to poor airmanship. Near as I can tell the rest of us are talking about out how to minimize our own personal probability of being the cause of an accident to ourselves or others while flying a glider. I'm having a hard time understanding why it matters that we determine if the total percentage of poor airmanship is 75%, 95% or 99.999% the cause... And a more minor point, I know that my airmanship is not even close to 95% perfect (I've been flying long enough to have proof) and I think I'm pretty hot **** :) Are you saying you have perfected airmanship to the degree that you have eliminated that risk for yourself entirely and that other considerations are not worth analyzing because the overwhelming cause of accidents is poor airmanship? I ask honestly and without malice. Frustrated perhaps, but honestly.

We agree on virtually all of the major points. No, it doesn't matter what the exact percentage is because that's going to vary from year-to-year, just that it is the majority of accidents. Poor airmanship is the one thing you have control over, even if you are not perfect (none of us are). I assume that most everyone posting here has good airmanship (the one's talking about religion are likely doing that from a tongue-in-cheek standpoint). If not, then they have something they should work on.

Tom