On Tuesday, February 6, 2018 at 1:14:40 AM UTC-5, jfitch wrote:
On Monday, February 5, 2018 at 3:11:40 PM UTC-8, John Cochrane wrote:
Bumping below as no response from any hard deck advocates:

JC: Sorry. I get tired of answering the same questions over and over

1) Lets define a typical contest area as a circle with a radius of 75 miles from the contest site. Lets assume this is Elmira. In this area the valley floors likely vary +/- 300ft and often that much within 10 miles of each other. Creating an SUA file to account for this would be nearly impossible.

JC: Even were this true, it is not a logical argument against a hard deck at Seniors, Hobbs, Uvalde, Perry, Cesar creek, Ionia, etc. etc. etc. where a single MSL altitude for most of the task area would suffice. I

2) This is one more thing that will cause people to be staring in the cockpit instead of outside. Spending time looking at computers WILL lead to not spending time looking at potential landing sites. This WILL lead to accidents that would otherwise not occur. The question is will the hard deck prevent more accidents than it will cause. This is a question that would likely take 10 years of data to analyze. In the meantime the rule may cause more deaths than it prevents.

JC: I love this old saw, it comes back again and again. We have to ban GPS, pilots will just be looking at their computers all the time! Dear friend, if you're down at 550 feet and you're looking slavishly at the pressure altitude on your flight recorder, you have a screw loose. Anyway, it's just one number. And every flight recorder has an audio warning of airspace violation. If at 550 feet you hear "ding! airspace" and you have to look down to wonder if you might be about to hit Class A, you have another screw loose.

3) The rule will penalize perfectly safe flying. I remember a 60 mile glide in dead air coming back to Mifflin while in the back seat of KS. Detoured to Jacks a few miles west of the airport and arrived about half way up the ridge (250ft+/-). Minimum sink speed and on top of the ridge in 30 seconds, home for the day win. If the SUA had a 300ft hard deck in the valley we would have crossed under it on the way to the ridge save. Result - landout.

JC: treated many times before. Again, not a logical argument against trying it at flatland sites. Already stated that in a mifflin situation you carve a hole for ridge flying.

Undoubtedly you have other reasons not to want to do it, but these are not logical ones.

John cochrane

The discussion has focused in on low saves. A low save attempt is the next to last link in a chain of events, the last of which may be a broken glider. I can't speak for John's idea, but the hard deck I was think of would break that chain back when you could do something about it.

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.

T8