Stewart,

I think you've lit on something. The difference between glider pilots
and racers. Yes, there is a difference. If I am not improving my skills
in some meaningful, measurable way, I lose interest in a sport very,
very quickly. It is ALL about the skills. I know Kilo Charlie well. I
know he gets this. So do many other pilots. It doesn't make us better
or worse. It simply means we operate under a different set of
priorities. Safety is one of them. But I think we're willing to put a
lot more effort into developing the skills necessary to be safe in more
varied and dynamic enivornments than many other pilots.

A decade ago, the sport lost one of chiefest skills: navigation. More
recently it has been peleton tactics. Some changes have been well
received: I didn't mind discarding the skills I'd learned in managing
the high speed start gate, by far the most dangerous environment we
faced. But recent attempts to use "safety" as a rubric for
ill-considered changes in rules and practices have increasingly "dumbed
down" the sport without really improving its safety. Seems safer. But
seems ain't is.

OC