I'm newer to soaring than most posters to this
group. I and perhaps a dozen of the folks I soar
with have been quite careful about the
gliders we choose to fly and purchase. At the very
top of the list are the safety features and characteristics
and
insurability of the gliders we fly.

When I talk to folks at the BASA meetings or at Byron
or at
Avenal or Hollister, we ultimately always end up discussing
safety. Hoe about adding a T&B in the glider? Oh
yeah,
you were in haze at dusk one time and that might have
helped?
Hmm...what do you think of the stall/wing drop?
Yeah, maybe I can give up a few points of L/D to avoid
that. Automatic hookups are a must for me...etc.

The crowd I hang with is interested in avoiding risk,
rather than counting on supernatural skill. We think
that
the guys who died thought that they were current and
skilled,
just as much as we think we are. But we realize that
really we are just average pilots too, and need to
'sandbag' in our favor instead of relying on our
overconfidence to save us.

Right or wrong, I have seen a half-dozen purchases

of gliders that were definitely compromises. Selecting
a glider with no flaps, fixed gear, and mild stall/spin
characteristics has become commonplace. Maybe a few
retracts purchased, after a goodly number of flights
in a non-owned retract.

Right or wrong, safety is a selling point...

At 15:06 01 July 2005, wrote:
wrote:

I have to smile at all these musings about safety
cockpits because it
will have virtually no effect on the injury/death
rate in soaring. Even
if every new glider had a 'safety' cockpit there would
be no
significant increase in the percentage of such cockpits
for decades to
come. Gliders, as well as other aircraft, will be,
and are, kept in
service until it is overwhelmingly uneconomical to
do so.


I'm encouraged by all the discussion, because I believe
it will
increase
the rate of change, and even though new safety features
take a while to
be a significant part of the fleet, the value of the
feature is
durable:
a safer glider bought now will provide that extra safety
for the life
of
the glider.

And spare me
the 'well we have to start somewhere' comment.


We have 'started somewhere', and in my opinion, the
big 'somewhere' was
over 20 years ago, when Schleicher and Waibel made
a big investment in
the design of the ASW 24 cockpit. We didn't have the
Internet to
discuss
things at the time, but I recall many pilots were not
impressed because
the cockpit design and disk brake added weight and
size. I know
Schliecher lost some sales because of it (but gained
some, also).

Even earlier, Waibel expressed his deep disappointment
that some pilots
ordered the new ASW 20 B/C models with the older ASW
20 'A' fuselage,
which lacked the stronger cockpit, the tilting instrument
panel that
made it easier to bail out, and the shock absorbing
landing gear with
disk brake, just to save a few pounds. I think we've
come a long ways
from that attitude, and it's been in good part because
of discussions
about the value of these changes.

Of course, the discussions about safer gliders began
before the ASW 24,
about such things as better spin behavior, automatic
control
connections, spoiler effectiveness, and so on. Still,
for me, that is
when pilots were offered a real choice.

Personally, I am not
going to spend an extra $100K to replace my current
motorglider with a
'safer' one.


That would buy you a new motorglider, but you could
buy a used DG
800/808 (or equivalent Schleicher or Schmepp-Hirth)
for more like
$60,000, and gain most of the improvements in the new
models. For less
than $1000, you could upgrade the safety of your current
glider with a
Roeger hook, available from DG as a retrofit.


That last fatal accident I posted shows you where
you need to spend
your effort: influencing the judgement of pilots.
This is not an
impossible task; the GA accident rate has been declining
even with an
ageing fleet.


It is not only in the air that a glider pilot must
use good judgment,
but also on the ground. For me, these discussions ARE
about influencing
the judgment of pilots: choosing the glider you intend
to trust with
your body is an important decision.


Mark J. Boyd