On 4/3/2016 7:12 PM, 2G wrote:
On Sunday, April 3, 2016 at 5:32:27 PM UTC-7, BobW wrote:
On 4/3/2016 7:07 AM, N97MT wrote:
I think that it is ironic that we as CFI's are tasked with turning the
"fear and anxiety" bit into what I would call "healthy respect" so
that real learning can take place. But in the process of beating the
fear out of (or shall I say, selling safety to?) the student we
abstract out a real and potentially life-saving emotion which may be
the only thing keeping an otherwise competent pilot from his own
demise.

Maybe this aspect of flight training is where's Mr. Spock's mind-meld
abilities would prove really useful! (For kids too young to remember the
original TV program "Star Trek," presumably somewhere on YouTube can be
found links to the "Mr. Spock" mind meld reference above...)

Might not a worthy goal for instruction be transitioning from the "fear
and anxiety" stage to the "healthy respect" stage withOUT heading down
the emotionally-numbing abstraction road? How would Joe CFIG be able to
gauge success? Your abstraction point above had not before occurred to
(non-instructor) me even as a possibility. Definitely food for thought,
though. Thanks!

I raised this at a seminar once when someone was describing a
pre-flight student simulating a spin/crash on Condor. In a hall full of
150 people and many CFI's in attendance I asked "but did the student
realize that at this point he is dead?" I only got silence and blank
stares in response.

Oh, for group mind-meld capability! Wouldn't you've liked to have known
with certainty the thoughts inside the heads of your fellow seminarians
at that moment?

Bob W.

Your original question was if low saves was a necessary XC skill. A "low
save" is technically the same as a high save; the only difference is
lowering your personal minimums. I have seen pilots die from attempting
this, so I MUST ask the question: what is the perceived benefit from
putting your life at risk?

In a contest it might mean placing a few positions higher, a meaningless
benefit for all but a very few. Or it might mean saving you and your crew
from a long and tiring retrieve, maybe even a overnight experience. Are you
willing to trade 20-50 years of lifetime for this inconvenience? I would
hope that most pilots - and their crew whom are usually their loved ones -
would say, emphatically, NO!


No offense intended, but I disagree with the paraphrase of my initial post as
stated in your first sentence, and for those who may not have been following
this thread from the beginning, immediately below is a cut-n-paste from that
initial post (the quoted paragraphs were separated by intervening paragraphs):

"In one corner of the thought ring we have "Sensible Caution," while in the
other corner we have "Dangerously (some will say, "Irresponsibly"!)
Encouraging Personal Limits Expansion." The topic itself is LOW SAVES - are
they Killers or are they a Usefully Necessary XC Skill?...

"Let's keep the discussion focused by considering ONLY the topic of "low
altitude saves," sooner or later something every XC-considering sailplane
pilot - having the slightest of imaginations - will consider, and (by
definition) will soon actually have to DO, once undertaking XC, whether such
XC occurs pre-planned or not."

Also, for the record, nowhere throughout the thread have I - or anyone else
that I can recall - attempted to numerically define "low save" (e.g. via an
agl number). In my case the omission was intentional. Why? Because one
person's "low save" may well be another's "routinely necessary XC skill," as
is easily seen when considering (say) Joe Average Sailplane Pilot's first
XC-to-undesired-outlanding vs. (say) his 20th. The mindsets on these flights
will be significantly different. The relative stress levels as J.A.S. Pilot
descends relentlessly - even though maybe not continuously - down, away from
his previously exulting "high on course" mindset present earlier in the
flight, will be significantly different. I seriously doubt a sailplane pilot
exists who will claim to be as "systemically stressed" on his 20th XC OFL (or
even his 20th XC *flight*) as on his first. Certainly,not me! On my very first
(unintentional) XC-to-landing, by the time I was down to ~2,000' agl I was
SERIOUSLY stressed, for beaucoup reasons, the only weather-related one being
that the boisterous climbs experienced in thermal #1 off tow, #2 used to go to
#3 one (1-26) thermal away from the field, and #3, seemed to exist now only as
memory. In other words, #4, the sole stepping stone I figured to need to get
back, simply didn't seem to be in the cards. (Yeah, I learned that day
something about differing airmasses!)

Even though I was a raw beginner, and even though I'd cleared the flight with
my (former) instructor, me now a 1/3 partner with him in the 1-26 he'd built
from a kit, I was already fighting "I can't believe this is happening!"
thoughts as I "ratty-teasers" descended down to 2,000' agl. And though I
suspect I'd've been able to climb away from (say) 1200' agl had I actually
encountered "usable lift" (like those first three thermals) at that altitude,
I'll never know. I had, well before then, picked out where I was likely going
to end up setting the ship down, but I *really* didn't want to have to.
Eventually, from my instructed pattern height, I did, successfully, and that
was that. By landout #20, my mindset was *any* landout ought to be no more
mentally stressful than a routine landing at my home field...if anything less
so, because I had only to "do the field selection thing" and not have to deal
with "the multiple runways at a busy GA airport" thing (far more potential
gotchas, IMO).

By landout #20 I'd also experienced plenty of opportunities to - gradually and
"acceptably-personally-stressfully" - lower my "comfortable thermalling
minimums" to my by then routine pattern entry height agl. Point being, "low
thermalling stress" is a hugely relative concept. Sure the ground clearance
margins are higher for "an equivalent stress level" for Joe Newbie XC pilot
compared to Joe Cool-w.-XC pilot, even if Joe Cool never performs a "low save
by Joe Reader's "even lower definition." Point being, that I'll dispute any
claim that "some definitional safety altitude" will always prove life-saving.
Pilots continue to kill themselves through unintended departures from
controlled flight even during benign-weather, flying "what should be routine"
landing patterns. Ignoring practical considerations mitigating against it,
would universally raising landing pattern altitudes end such departures from
controlled flight? I think not.

I'm not trying to weasel out of what may have been (an understandable)
difference in perception between "low save" as I had in mind in my initial
post, and "low save" as you interpreted it. I was - and am - more interested
in the mindsets that pilots who indulge in what *they* consider to be low
saves may have, and how those mindsets may - or may not - affect how they
mentally approach flight in conditions of intentionally-thinned margins.
Because, to my way of thinking, thin margins are an absolute. They respect no
one and no level of experience. Physics doesn't care; physics just is (am?).
It's up to Joe Pilot to deal with physics.

For the record, I've had "pretty well known to me friendly soaring
acquaintances" die from "unintentionally thinned to zero" margins, ranging
from "a (probably) stressed-like-me-newbie" trying to return from the local
ridge (benign day; hit a tree), to someone who somehow or other managed to
spin to the ground from an estimated 2,000' above a knife-edged ridge (3500+'
agl above the adjoining plains) in utterly benign conditions in a
within-CG-range glider, which one of his partners (a good friend of mine) said
flew like a pussycat. Fuzzy memory says the latter pilot had landed off-field,
but in any case how he encountered the original departure from controlled
flight must remain a mystery. Both pilots were in their later twenties. There
have been more...

But to explicitly address the question you've posed, i.e.: "I have seen pilots
die from attempting this ["a low save"], so I MUST ask the question: what is
the perceived benefit from putting your life at risk?"

That, to me, is the million dollar question. I wouldn't bet against someone
replying to the effect that even to indulge in soaring is "putting your life
at risk," but should they, I'd respond along the lines that life itself is a
risk, and that to not indulge in personally rewarding, voluntary activities
(which is just about everything beyond working to earn one's
food/clothing/shelter keep) would be a gray life indeed, arguably, one hardly
worth living.

To my way of thinking, how one chooses to go about approaching soaring flight
with voluntarily thinning/thin margins is an intensely personal thing, with
potentially "friends-n-family-affecting" negative consequences. I doubt anyone
really needs to have that aspect pointed out to them, when premature death is
on the talking table...but I could be wrong. It's how we - J.A.S. pilot; the
sailplane piloting community at large; CFIGs - mentally approach those higher
danger zones that is of genuine interest to me. I just don't see "hard limits
defined by someone else" as an unarguably, universally,
always-safety-enhancing, good thing. The individual ALWAYS has a say (and a
vote) in how they approach flight. As I gained soaring flight experience, my
own thinking tended to evolve toward thinking it "CERtainly better for me, and
probably better for Joe Every Other Pilot" to embrace the outlook that
sensibly expanding one's flight skills is a good thing...key word being
"sensibly."

In an earlier post in this thread I mentioned I'd recently looked at every
U.S. sailplane fatality this century in the NTSB's database. Ignoring those
presently lacking an NTSB-considered "Probable Cause" and some 20+ I tossed
out as too easily rationalizable as "geezer-related" or "out-of-hand stupid,"
of the roughly 55 remaining deaths "only" 4 *might* be attributable to "low
thermalling," in the "low save" sense of things, with "low" being defined as
"obviously/apparently below routine ground clearances for a normal pattern."
And to obtain 4, I had to infer one Sierra fatality. That's 4 too many, and at
least one of those deaths happened in a setting with many witnesses (and
families), undoubtedly searing its way into many minds which would prefer not
to be so burdened. There were 17 (!) "routine pattern" unintended departures
from controlled flight resulting in fatalities, including two with instructors
on board in G-103s. (IMO, perhaps only the 2-33 is a more benign,
routinely-used-in-the-U.S., training ship.) There were additional "should have
been routinely executable" landing patterns (with "departure from controlled
flight deaths") downstream of premature terminations of tows for various
reasons. (I haven't attempted to "hard categorize" every fatality with a fine
brush, broad-brushing satisfying my curiosity. I'm uninterested in "debating
about trees" regarding "category buckets." However, for anyone seriously
interested in discussing things with me on this front, feel free to do so
offline, but understand you'll first need to go through the NTSB records for
yourself...tedious, it is.)

If I'm limited to a single point from the preceding paragraph, it'd be simply
that this century's statistical risk from "low saves" is way out on one tail,
probably regardless of how one chooses to categorize all the fatalities. By
far, many more "average sailplane pilots" die from "routine flight conditions"
than while "obviously pushing this particular limit."

Bob W.