Ian,

I like your train of thought. As well as decoupling from a term that
has such strong connotations.

Ian Johnston wrote:
On Mon, 27 Jun 2005 15:48:07 UTC, Stefan
wrote:

: Last weekend I flew in the mountains. Conditions were rough and I had to
: make fairly dramatic motions of the controls to keep the blue side up.
: I'll log it as an aerobatic flight, then.

All this seems to hinge on what's meant by "aerobatic". Frankly, it
seems like a pretty pointless term to me, since it seems to depend on
the intention of the pilot rather on the manoevres flown. Why, for
example, is a loop aerobatic yet a tight thermalling turn, involving
similar stresses on the glider, is not?

To me, it makes more sense to categorize manoevres as high load / low
load and high risk / low risk, where "load" relates to forces on the
glider and "risk" relates to the speed with which things will go wrong
if the pilot misreacts.

That gives four permutations:

1) low load / low risk (normal flight)
2) low load / high risk (inverted flight)
3) high load / low risk (loop, tight thermalling)
4) high load / high risk (spin or spiral dive recovery)

This is off the top of my head, and I am sure we could argue about the
categories (should there be a "medium" in each case?) and
categorisations (how hard is a loop) for ages.

However, I think I would put many display aerobatic manoevres and
winch launching together in the high load / high risk category: it's
not that winch launching is aerobatic (whatever that means) but it is
also a time when the glider is being flown with higher than normal
structural loadings and when pilot error can cause things to go very
nasty very quickly.

I'd put mountain flying, from the little I have done, in the low load
/ high risk category at the very least, and probably high / high on
rough days.

Ian


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