KM wrote:
According to
pilots like Eric G and Paul M, the posting of "Look what I did" flights
is discouraged.

Not so! I encourage pilots to post their flights. Perhaps this comment I
made was the one that mislead you:

"It's called the OnLine Contest, not the "What-I-did forum" where you
post whatever you like,"

The key part is the "where you post whatever you like"; i.e., there are
some rules about what can be posted. You can, and I hope you will, post
any flight that meets those few rules.

So this begs the question that if a pilot is not out to
win, why even post a flight on the SSA-OLC?

I'm not out to win, but I do enjoy seeing how well other pilots are
doing around the country and the world, and the handicap system makes it
easier to see that. It's not perfect, of course, because weather
differences aren't adjusted for, but it's good enough to be interesting.

Now let me state that I fly for a living, and I
have every motivation BOTH from a monitary standpoint and a safety
standpoint to follow the regs, but lets say my flight recorder does
something stupid and now I have the same outfit that I pay dues to
HELPING the FAA come after me?

This won't happen for several reasons: you won't send in a flight with
'something stupid' on it caused by the flight recorder (you do look at
the flight before you'd send it in, right?), and if you did, the SSA is
smart enough to recognize that, and help you fix the problem, and if the
FAA still got ahold of it, the SSA has the expertise with flight
recorder interperation to help you convince the FAA nothing bad was done.

I have a backround as a check airman and safety inspector, and we
looked at rules violations from a standpoint of education and
prevention, not the punitive standpoint the SSA has.

Punitive? There are no penalities, just a private request to remove a
flight that doesn't meet the rules. If the pilot refuses, then the
flight might be removed anyway. Is that "punitive"? To the pilots
abiding by the rules, that doesn't seem like punishment, just fair play,
because the flight should never have been submitted.

So in conclusion, I was hoping the list members could field a couple of
questions, First, if a pilot were to post an ocasional short flight,
say 2 to 3 hundred miles about once a week, is he gonna get laughed at?

Heck no! Even if you are flying a Nimbus 4 - no laughter!

And two, is there a way to bypass the SSA-OLC (and forgo all the
politics and flaming), and just post to the OLC in Germany?

I've posted over 80 flights on the SSA-OLC with no politics and no
flaming - just help (on request) from the OLC and SSA-OLC when
occasional problems arose. You plan to fly in an entirely legal manner,
so no one will question your flights, either. Inspect your flights for
obvious problems before posting, then post them on the SSA-OLC, where
the rest of the USA can enjoy them.

--
Note: email address new as of 9/4/2006
Change "netto" to "net" to email me directly

Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA

"Transponders in Sailplanes" on the Soaring Safety Foundation website
www.soaringsafety.org/prevention/articles.html

"A Guide to Self-launching Sailplane Operation" at www.motorglider.org