This is a beautiful story..right up to the last two paragraphs. Read those again, carefully

"At the awards ceremony, he added that he was going to do a straight in to the
ground, options permitting, but he was NOT going to quit. He intended to leave
nothing "in the cockpit" so to speak. He was trying to make the field. Runway
18 has some powerlines on its northern approach, and a barbed-wire fence not
far beyond. He figured he could safely make it UNDER the powerlines...but
wasn't certain he could make it OVER the fence. He landed. He said it was the
roughest 1-26 landing he'd ever made. And that's saying something from a man
who probably has well over a hundred off-field landings in a 1-26, many of
them on dirt roads.

He said that after all the banging and bumping stopped, and after all the dust
had cleared away, and after he could see his flight computer, it showed he'd
come to a stop barely within the finish circle! Under the 1-26 rules he would
be scored with speed points!! He said he didn't care at that moment if he had
lost, he knew he'd done his and the day's best. That's what competition - and
life - is all about. Doing your best.

Harry Baldwin. Champion of champions."


Really now? I spent most of this season enduring tongue lashings about our finish rules. "No sane pilot will push a final glide, just because of some point system," they said. "Experienced pilots will always give up and do a proper landout with at least 500 feet left" they said. "Pilots aren't doing stupid things just because of rules" they said.

Then read this story. You can't ask for more experience!

"he was going to do a straight in to the ground"

I.e., Not only did he get tempted at the last moment, he planned to do it!

"He figured he could safely make it UNDER the powerlines...but wasn't certain he could make it OVER the fence."

"showed he'd come to a stop barely within the finish circle! Under the 1-26 rules he would be scored with speed points!!"

You can't ask for a clearer example of finish rules inducing amazingly stupid behavior.

For let's call it what it is, this is amazingly stupid behavior. A straight in approach, to a high desert site, planned under power lines with a barbed wire fence approaching? Even at 20:1 it's pretty hard to see what's ahead..

What would you all have been saying if this had gone badly, as it had every right to do, and Harry hit one of those wires, or there had been a boulder, unseen from a straight in glide, on his landing. Would the story still have been "there goes a top pilot, doing just the right thing, a victim of unfortunate and unforeseeable circumstance?"

Or would the story have been the usual chorus of denial: "Well, he must have been dehydrated." "You know, pilots that age..." "What a bozo maneuver. Surely great pilots like me would never do such a thing." "Well, whatever was on his mind, the 126 rules that give speed points for a landout a mile from the airport can't have been it." Fortunately he survived to tell us that was exactly what was on his mind.

But most of all, this isn't about Harry. We've all done dumb things. And sometimes been silly enough to boast of them at the pilot's meeting the next day. This is about the rest of us. We glorify this??? This is the story we want to pass on to our young impressionable pilots? "Wow, this is how real champions do it?" "Keep this story in mind when you're making tough in flight decisions?"

No, I'm sorry. In this case, not champion of champions. In this case, one really lucky guy, who did something amazingly dumb, and thanks to the low energy of the 1-26 got away with it.

Dear Danny and other promising new contest pilots: This is NOT how contest flying is done. When the rules of your contest allow you to earn hundreds of points and win the day by doing something incredibly dumb, like a Mc 0 glide straight in, under a powerline, heading toward a barbed wire fence, to roll just into a finish cylinder dodging mesquite and boulders, you do NOT do it. You land out, from a comfortable altitude, over a field you can see, and live to fly again next year. Don't thermal at 200 feet either. We want you to still be flying when you're 84.

John Cochrane BB