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Old September 18th 19, 01:45 AM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
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Default Kawa rough landing?

On Tuesday, September 17, 2019 at 3:55:37 PM UTC-7, BobW wrote:
On 9/17/2019 10:00 AM, wrote:
...I guess you miss the main point of the posts. The point is.... if
you want to get good at any particular aviation skill you have to practice
it a lot. Talk all you want, it is no excuse [substitute? editorial
insertion] for specific experience.

Case in point, all the stall spin accidents that continue to happen. We
have discussed, analysed, surmised, engineered, and dogmatized that topic
to death. But it still is the number one killer. Why? I believe its
because very very very few pilots have taken their bird up at altitude and
practiced practiced practiced. Not incipient entry alone, but that, AND full
rotation, practice and experience again and again till recognition and
recovery becomes automatic. Off field landings are no different. Even with
all that said and tons of practice **** does happen. Maybe not for the guy
who never does more than float around at the top of a thermal venturing
only gliding distance from home field. But for the guy who is trying to
stretch and do something, if he does enough, he's gonna get bit once in
awhile. That includes Kawa, or Moffat, or any one.

Talking is great and necessary, but doing is a whole lot more essential..


Apologies if we're not quite beyond RAS' Official "Thread Drift Now OK"
thread-timing mark.

I'm gonna "second" the "practice practice practice" sentiment...as a worthy
thing to do, *regardless* of one's overall/general experience level, and
without knowing Mr. Kawa's specifics (which I assume are well beyond the Joe
SixPack Glider Pilot average).

I saw the results of a(n admittedly) botched approach/touchdown-attempt in a
Phoebus to a shortish, uphill field, soon after cutting the XC cord
myself...and quickly came to the conclusion I was glad I had the learning
experience from someone else's (non-physical-injury)
misfortune/mis-judgements. He got off light...just "the usual cracked Phoebus
wood gear-attach-bulkhead." No less importantly, he learned the requisite
lessons and was happy to share them with fellow club members. The error which
led to the dropped-in-from-"several-feet" arrival crunch ultimately was
running out of airspeed due in no small part to the optical illusion induced
by rounding out too high (becuzza the "higher than normal" distant horizon
against which the roundout height was judged...since that's what normal
landings benefit from) with insufficient energy to "wait for the ground to
arrive under the tire." To the pilot's serious credit, he figured out what
he'd done wrong before more experienced wisdom was made available to him....

Sh*t does happen, and - arguably - is more likely to on off-field landings,
but cold-blooded review of real-world accidents lead *me* to conclude (even
before I got my license) that the vast majority of crunches have direct Joe
Gliderpilot active contribution(s). So far as I'm concerned (46+ years of data
later), I've never been inclined to change that opinion.

Practice as if you may need the skills/reaction(s)...because some day you may...

YMMV,
Bob W.

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It does absolutely no good to practice something you will never use, which is a spin recovery from low altitude. The only solution is prevention - if a particular mistake is going to kill you, you can't do it. Most low altitude spins are due to uncoordinated flight - mostly misuse of the rudder because the pilot fears the visual image he gets by a steep bank.

No amount of landout practice is going to prepare you to landing in a field with unseen obstacles, which is what apparently happened to Kawa. If you push into an area with poor landing options you should not be surprised when things turn out badly.

Tom