"BG" wrote in message
...
kirk.stant wrote:
BG,

I think what we have here is a difference in our "english". US usage
of aggressive vs conservative. Different points on a range of
approaches to a task. Foolhardy or Impulsively, or even carelessly &
dangerously would be beyond aggressive on the scale.

I think of aggressive when I tilt the balance of rewards vs risk in
the direction of risk (in this case, landing out, not damage/injury).
Conservative is avoiding the risk of landing out at any cost, usually
due to logistics of a retrieve.

US use of term aggressive may be cultural, come to think about it...

Changing the subject, it's interesting that you have the same problem
we have of clubs not liking XC flights. There really seems to be two
types of glider pilots out there, at times!

Cheers,

Kirk
66

Hi Kirk

As I said probably semantics.
Have been actively working on getting some of our members to fly a little
further. Limited success so far, but I am painfully persistent...

We definitely have a few kinds of glider pilots. Broadly the goldfish bowl
types and the XC types. Wild variation in other attributes within the
groups. For example the highest risk taker and most likely candidate for a
BIG moment in a glider - feels the danger represented by outlanding is too
high to risk, and flies very limited XC in very conservative mode. Then
does low level aerobatics and redline wormburners over the runway at home.
One has to wonder.

Inadvertently changed my signature there when I re-installed my news
reader - have to fix it.

Bruce

One way to describe agressiveness is that a conservative pilot will fly M=2
on a 4 knot day and an agressive pilot may fly M=8 on a 4 knot day. With
flight analysis programs feeding NMEA data to PDA glide software you can
determine the McCready setting the pilot is using. I see a lot of very
successful pilots flying aggressively that way. These guys succeed because
they're very good at finding their next source of lift.

Another way to describe a conservative XC pilot is that he will always have
two 'known-safe" landing spots within gliding range using half his published
max L/D corrected for headwind/tailwind.

I'm conservative both ways.

I'm not sure what scares pilots most about landouts. I find that light
airplane pilots with a lot of XC experience are less stressed than those who
have rarely landed away from their home field. It's probably just fear of
the unknown - what they don't know is that airportrs are pretty much alike.

It's also possible instructors, knowingly or otherwise, have taught landing
patterns using landmarks near the home field. The student instinctively
knows the "red barn" he uses to turn base won't be there at another airfield
and that scares him. It's really great if a student can get experience
landing at several different fields.

Bill Daniels