A safe launch requires a plethera of things to be right in the glider.

For my reptile brain, actually touching and moving works better than looking and saying. But I can see how different pilots have different best ways of dealing with these.

I've seen an attentive ground person check for a pilot that's not 'with it', provide extra time, limit distractions, and pause the launch if something seems out of place. For a club ship, physically verifying the canopy is locked sometimes makes sense if it can be done without breaking the pilot's train of thought. Past that, I'm not sure.

Training a new pilot probably needs a different story for the ideal ground guy, but if ground starts trying to enforce some specific get ready procedure, it seems a close call if he's helping or adding to the distractions and making things worse?


PS: I like my side opening canopy. But the last podcast with Dave talking about bailout issues are food for thought.