Soaring Safety

Last November, I chaired a panel at the local SSA affiliate (PASCO)'s
Soaring Safety Seminar entitled "Complacency: What Me Worry?" I wrote
up my part of that and made it available at

http://ee.stanford.edu/~hellman/soar...2007_talk.html

Just today, PASCO got a request from the Capetown S.A. soaring club to
reprint the article with the following explanation:

"The reason for writing to you is that my gliding club was unfortunate
to lose a member recently in a ridge accident. He was an extremely
experienced ridge pilot and only on his eighth flight in his brand new
DG808. Your PASCO Safety Seminar article titled "Complacency" is
therefore of particular relevance to our members."

My Soaring Safety page

http://ee.stanford.edu/~hellman/soaring/safety.html

has links to several other highly relevant articles. With respect to
ridge soaring and the too regular fatalities of "extremely experienced
ridge pilots" please see the links to Henry Combs article and JJ
Sinclair's. Gantenbrink's speech is a must read if you haven't seen
it, though I suspect most of you have. But, then again, it is worth
reading more than once.

Hoping this helps.

Martin
N56WT