A post from another thread is timely - this being the start of the most active
part of the U.S. soaring season. Excerpted from another thread:

Beginning of Excerpt...

"There's a personality type that won't be convinced. I stopped to talk to a
pilot who was launching on a wave day at Minden. Foehn gap was dynamic,
tentacles moving and reaching in with drizzle earlier as I drove north on
Foothill to Minden airport. The gap, and a lone sucker hole about half way to
the Pinenuts, were the only holes through an otherwise solid deck at about
9,000'.

"He was the only one launching in his Carat. I'd asked him before about no
chute, said they were uncomfortable, I suggested he sit in my glider to see
what he thought - he countered, "You don't use a chute in your Mooney, do you?
Well, my Carat is certified too".

"He was relatively new to soaring, so I cautioned him about going above and
leaving the gap. He said he wouldn't do that as he didn't have O2 because of a
slow leak - he declined my offer to fill his tank. There was more, but to keep
it short . . . he died that day as I was eating lunch at the Taildragger. He
was a retired airline pilot, lot's of experience but no attitude gyro. Kept
his GPS off in the side pocket until he needed it. He went IMC. The debris
field was 5 miles long. My golden retriever and I would be the last to ever
greet him.

"Really good pilots don't need Flarm. Don't need a chute either. He was not
THAT good."

End of Excerpt...

I'm likely not the only RASident to remember this particular pilot from his
tenure-on/contributions-to RAS. I didn't know the man, or his background,
beyond what was self-revealed in his posts, but I remember certain aspects (as
they seemed to me) of his post-centric-personality triggered tiny flags of
concern in my noodle. Unsurprisingly to me, nothing from the excerpt above is
at odds with those now-ancient recollections. The flags all had to do with
what seemed-to-me to be "unwarranted certitude" relative to certain
safety-related opinions held by the poster. My never-verbalized take then, was
along the lines of: I hope your future PIC realities don't exceed your
"expressed certitudes." Reality always wins.

Soaring - everything - has risks. It's up to J. Pilot to intelligently
mitigate 'em. Apparently, the pilot in the cautionary tale above could have
done a better job of mitigating those related to his soaring "career."
Sometimes warning flags are raised in others' minds; sometimes not. Reason for
this post is to encourage more toward the "active awareness" portion of
reading pilots' brains, the *possibility* that their attitudes - and decisions
relating thereto - may have "quite direct, negative" influences upon their
flight outcomes. The trick - in my view - is to actively seek to bias "future
reality" in your favor as much as reasonably possible. What that motherhood
and apple pie statement means is (almost) entirely up to J. Pilot. FLARM,
transponder, parachute, ATC vs. Experimental certification, pure or
engine-assisted ship, XC, competition, wave or ridge or thermal-only
soaring... J. Pilot gets - and *needs* - to choose. Many an accident report
strongly suggests it DOESN'T go without saying, "Choose wisely."

Avoidable loss of life is always a tragedy in my view, regardless of the
proximity of the personal relationship.

Bob W.

P.S. For the record, if any reader's main takeaway from reading my opinions as
expressed in this post, is something along the lines of, "Man! This guy is
really good at second-guessing someone else's decisions," I'll regretfully
have to conclude my self-selected little safety sermon hasn't been entirely
successful! In any event have - safe - fun out there, everyone!!!

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