On 8/29/2011 12:08 PM, Evan Ludeman wrote:
On Aug 28, 6:03 pm, Andreas wrote:
On Sat, 27 Aug 2011 17:22:45 -0700 (PDT), Dave
wrote:

PS: Not a new problem. Discussed in my 1987 article:
http://www.nadler.com/public/Nadler_...g_May_1987.pdf

Hi Dave - scary lecture!

I have to admit I was horrified reading your description of all these
incidents and the nescience of the pilots - how have things progressed
since you wrote this article? Did it get better (and why?)...?

Regards from Germany
Andreas

I'll chime in because that article was published at a very
impressionable time in my soaring career and it made a substantial
impression at that time. That was the month I passed my PP glider
flight test. Also, I knew several pilots who were at the contest(s)
that article was written about and some of those guys were my
instructors.

I'd been soaring ~13 years when Dave's article appeared, and though in my own
mind considered myself still a newbie/beginner - had ~850 hours and doubt if
any of my club peers considered me a newbie - it also made a favorable,
lasting, helluvan impression on me. IIRC I was sufficiently favorably
impressed I wrote him a snail mail letter thanking him for it; it was/remains
a classic IMHO, and I hope one or two RAS readers may be motivated from
reading it, to improve their own thought processes...because that's what it's
all about. Mere mechanical skill means little without some brains to leaven it.

First, no one disputes the facts, they are what they are, the friends
no longer with us, the busted ships, the memorial trophies. Some of
the other pilots had a huge issue with how Dave portrayed some of the
things he saw from his cockpit that didn't result in damage. I don't
have an opinion on that (but I have a friend that will still go angry
red in the face if this article is brought up!).

Wow...

However, 24 years
and 20-odd contests later, I do not find Dave's commentary far fetched
*at all*. I've seen all of this crap decision making (and lack of
decision making), first hand.

And certainly not limited to contests, though I realize we all like to imagine
contest pilots involve a select (better-thinking) subset of the soaring
population. Paying judgmental attention to the antics routinely displayed at
any gliderport on a soaring weekend can be not only entertaining, but
personally *useful*.


What's changed is: pilots are older& more experienced (average age
perhaps 10 yrs older now than 1987), ships are better (auto control
hookups, better handling, safety cockpits), procedures are better --
starts and finishes, critical assembly checks for instance, and
tasking is easier. A GPS navigated 2.5 hour AAT is about half the
workload of the camera documented task you were likely to get in the
mid 80s in similar weather. My opinion, anyway.

What hasn't changed (enough): lousy decision making leading to
seriously unsafe situations. Most disturbing is that the post
accident interviews often don't yield useful lessons learned (or at
least nothing new). Sometimes even the awareness of the pilot
involved seems to be lacking, he may persist in thinking he was simply
the victim of some outrageously bad luck.

Just out of curiosity, are there any readers who have NOT experienced what
Evan writes about (presuming you've poked into the thought processes of
others, of course)? "What Evan said," about that being 'disturbing'...and (to
me anyway - here comes the judgmental part) really scary/worrisome.

At least now if he's flying
a modern ship he's often around to interview. Those fatalities at
Sugarbush involved ships that had no cockpit protection to speak of.

On the other hand, the guys that mentored me starting a quarter
century ago are almost all still flying& still flying contests and
they don't break a lot of stuff. I guess I picked good role models.
Whatever. It's possible to fly competition (and do well) with a sane
safety record.

Just to be a bit anal, that last sentence covers a LOT of 'thought ground.'

What makes consistent soaring contest placers and winners isn't willingness to
take more risks than the other guys combined with consistently good luck, but
something far more complex, combining knowledge (of weather, of themselves, of
their ship, of the local geography, of the day's possibilities, etc.) skill,
and good judgment. A good argument can be made 'unintelligent risk-taking'
actually *slows* - and potentially limits - one's gaining of knowledge,
building of skill, and learning good judgment. Anyone taking risks as a means
of 'expanding their knowledge base' without also having in-hand - and being
prepared to immediately implement once certain self-defined limits are reached
- a *good* (safety-increasing) Plan B, a nearly fully-developed good Plan C
and some nascent other good possibilities is, I'd suggest, definitionally
taking 'unintelligent risks.'

FWIW...
Bob W.