On Tuesday, February 6, 2018 at 5:07:27 PM UTC-5, jfitch wrote:
On Tuesday, February 6, 2018 at 10:15:10 AM UTC-8, Tango Eight wrote:
On Tuesday, February 6, 2018 at 10:55:32 AM UTC-5, John Cochrane wrote:
T8: Part of what's being tested every time we go XC soaring (never mind competition) is the ability to assess and manage risk. I relish this. If you take this out of the game... well, it's no longer the same game.


Are you f...ing kidding? You voluntarily enjoy the ability to assess and manage physical risk.. and by definition to occasionally fail with potentially fatal results? What is this, aviation or climbing Mt. Everest?

Anyway, fear not dear T8. Even with a hard deck, you will still be flying a motorless aircraft, and there will be plenty of opportunity for you to scare yourself silly even though you no longer will get contest points for it. We'll even still give you points for flying in clouds, through thunderstorms, over unlandable terrain, shoot mountain passes with 10 feet to spare, and so forth. And the risk of losing points at 500 or 1000 feet might still be enough to keep you awake, though the hard ground won't give you quite the rush it used to.

I mean, really, of all the illogic on this thread, the idea that no longer giving contest points for what a pilot chooses to do under 500 or 1000 feet AGL, removes all risk from motorless aviation, so the pilot no longer has to "assess and manage risk" is the most ludicrous. You might as well argue that we remove parachutes, so pilots get more of the adrenaline rush of assessing and managing risks.

Oppose a hard deck if you will, but please bring some faint common sense, thought and logic to the discussion

John Cochrane

No, I'm not kidding. However I have (unintentionally) exposed your rather considerable confirmation bias.

I was responding to Jon's earlier stated idea to create a hard deck thousands of feet in the air.

What I relish is the fact that it's all on me as PIC. I have to be disciplined enough to know when to say "screw this, I'm landing", or "screw this, I'm at Tatum bound for Portales, it's blue, there's cirrus, I'm unfamiliar with the terrain, it looks like the moon, I'm out of my element, I'm fatigued, I'm going to stay with the clouds and wait" (day 1, 2013 15s). I relish the fact that I know I am bigger & stronger than my own ego. That day my score sucked but the glider was safely in the box, still shiny. My tie down neighbor's... not so much.

Back to the 500' thing: at 500' over a landable field, I'm landing. Duh. What the **** is going to happen in the 120 seconds between 500' and 250' that didn't happen in the last half hour? With about 99% probability... nothing at all.

ND: The smart thing to do if the nannies do have their way is leave all that airspace out of your nav equipment and just fly your best game. You tag the airspace, well sucks to be you.

I don't think we need the rule, I will oppose it if asked. My prediction is: if such a rule were adopted, it won't be 500' for very darned long.

Evan Ludeman / T8

Well, this discussion has been quite the education for me. Now this thread is only a sampling of about 10 pilots, but many among those consider taking occasional, considerable risks up to an including imminent chance of death part of soaring competition, because it has always been that way and they like it. I personally know a few pilots with similar attitudes towards the sport, but it is a small minority among the pilot community that I fly with.

An interesting side line to the discussion is the notion that safety is a binary quantity: you either are, or are not safe in a certain situation. I view it much more as a continuum from almost safe to damned dangerous. It stems directly from the margin for error allowed at any moment. That margin for error must include errors due to pilot skill, weather conditions, other aircraft, and the unknown unknowns. You can affect only the first of those. If the margin for error is large (high, clear benign weather, etc.) the you are relatively safe. If the margin for error is allowed to go very low (circling at 400 ft over a field you've never landed in) the slightest of errors of any kind - not just pilot skill - can break through the margin to calamity.

Is circling at 2000 ft safe? Relatively. At 1000? not as much. At 500? a lot of things can go wrong. When stories are told of circling at 100 ft but it's safe because you are on final to a field - was this a field you landed in before? have any of the conditions changed? Is the wind gradient exactly as it was 3 years ago when last you were here?

There is also an attempt to conflate the nanny state with competition rules. This is specious. I am against helmet laws for motorcycles, even though I wear one every time I get on a bike. It's your brain. But in an organized motorcycle race, helmets are absolutely required. That isn't a "nanny state", and I'm not against it. Some motorcycle racers will argue they don't want to wear a helmet - its hot, gets in the way of vision, they don't wear one when they ride on the street, and they aren't going to ride any differently. Nevertheless it is required. I'm against a hard deck and any other unnecessary rules for soaring flight. But in soaring competition, as in every other form of competition, there needs to be limits on the worst tolerable behavior, not for that individual but for others who do not share their values, so that rewards are not proportional to bodily risk taken.

"the ability to assess and manage risk" has but one final arbiter: the failure to manage it resulting in mayhem. The measuring stick for this is: are there more accidents in competition than in normal cross country flight? I believe the answer is yes, meaning the risks are either higher or not being managed. Is the accident rate in competition acceptable? I don't believe it is, as long as it is higher than non-competition flying. I gather that many of the participants posting here disagree, as most seem to oppose any rules changes that might affect safety. "Risk" in the above quote ought to be the risk that you might have to slow down to maintain adequate altitude, or might land out at a known good site with plenty of time to do an ordinary, proper pattern and land. It should not be risk of putting the glider in an unknown field in unknown weather conditions while severely stressed and pressed for time.

I think you may be dramatizing this. not every off-field landing comes with a case of mild PTSD. in competition, they rarely occur at a known, and previously scouted location. some are stressful, yes. but i've had many that were totally benign.

flying gliders means that you are inherently at risk for putting a glider into a field every time you fly. the ability to assess and manage risk has everything to do with landing out. it's maybe the most important ability a cross country or competition pilot can have. its also just as critical for local pilots. the fields that they may have to land in are much more familiar, but the local pilot is less practiced at off-field landings.

Evan is right. each pilot has the responsibility to use sound judgement to hang it up and get the glider safely on the ground.