P Ilatus wrote:
absolutely no purpose for that exercise in fact it's an irresponsible act
that shows total disregard for safe operating procedure. The organisation
who made the film should be ashamed. This is the way moronic clubs
operate.




At 12:30 15 November 2008, Jim Beckman wrote:

The fact that this crew omitted the control check is really kind of
dumb.
If something had gone wrong, it would have spoiled their whole day.

Jim Beckman



OK - I am one of the safety primates.
Would I approve of doing this?

Probably - it would raise the competence of club members substantially.
I see lots of planning, and absolute adherence to an operating plan.

There is risk inherent in everything we do - One assumes they did this
with an airframe they had checked very carefully, and then practised
getting it right, many times. Risk known, managed and minimised much
more than many of the things that happen at airfields.

Personally I would put the risk of mis-assembly on this one at way lower
than the glider assembled by a few amiable chaps collected randomly by
the guy with a trailer...

As to whether they proved anything meaningful - that is for them to
know. I know many people wonder what meaning I find in getting into a
little glass fibre enclosure with long skinny wings and going and doing
something that appears to an external observer to be high risk,
uncomfortable and pointless. Point is I find it meaningful and enjoyable
flying my glider - they found it meaningful to demonstrate how fast they
could safely assemble a Discus. Each to his own, but lets stay away from
name calling.

As an exercise - consider whether there really was no control check. I
can see there was no "normal" positive control check. But I can't see
from the video whether the controls were moved deliberately during
assembly with someone observing a specific sequence of stick movements.
Or maybe there was an agreed quick control movement sequence from the
pilot with observers for each surface. I don't know if they did, and I
am not convinced it would make a huge difference if they had, but we
can't be sure there was no check. There is an awful lot going on in the
video - Ask any magician how they get people to not see things...

Similarly I have more than once seen things that were "postively
checked" fail to be in the state that more than one person had only
moments before been prepared to swear that they had confirmed.

The biggest problem with safety is the complacency arising from the
mistaken assumption that our actions have ensured it.

In this case I expect everyone involved was very aware of the real and
immediate possibility of things going wrong. That is much better for
safety than lots complacency.

Would I do this myself? - probably not - but not because I think it unsafe.

Maybe a little more than 2c worth, so I'll get off the soap box now.

Bruce