Put your money where the risk is

2G wrote on 11/16/2019 4:56 PM:
On Saturday, November 16, 2019 at 6:12:07 AM UTC-8, Eric Greenwell wrote:
2G wrote on 11/15/2019 10:16 PM:
On Tuesday, November 12, 2019 at 6:40:44 AM UTC-8, Richard Livingston
wrote:
In mountain climbing there is the concept of "objective hazard". This
is a hazard that is recognized, such as climbing up a gully that
occasionally experiences rock falls. If you are in the gully when this
happens it would almost certainly be fatal. The wise climber recognizes
this hazard and decides what he can do to mitigate it, such as climbing
before dawn when rock falls are less likely (warming by sunlight tends to
trigger these). He then has to decide if, for a particular situation,
the risk is worth the reward (getting to the peak, or getting back to
camp before the weather turns bad).

The wise climber sometimes loses this gamble. The unwise climber loses
more often. Soaring is similar in that there are hazards that, through
training, experience and acquired skill, can be recognized and
mitigated, but never completely avoided. Each pilot must assess their
own skill versus the situation and decide if the reward is worth the
risk. The wise pilots will sometimes lose, but the unwise pilots will
lose more often.

Rich L

I challenge you guys to go back thru the last few years of glider accidents
in the US and find ANY fatal accidents that fall into these categories..
Generally, they are the consequence of ****-poor airmanship.

I don't recall any recent incidents, but getting sucked into a cloud may be
an example of slowly reducing your margins because you got away with it
before. I'm thinking of Erik Larson, who wasn't killed, but bailed out of his
ASH26E when it became enveloped in a cloud while wave flying out of Minden.
Another is Kempton Izuno, who got pulled up into the cloud during
thermalling, and very narrowly avoided catastrophe. Both could have gone far
worse. Another example might be Bill Gawthrop's crash short of the runway at
Truckee. All three of these were very good pilots at the time of the
incidents.


-- Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA (change ".netto" to ".us" to email
me) - "A Guide to Self-Launching Sailplane Operation"
https://sites.google.com/site/motorg...ad-the-guide-1

None of these were fatal accidents (Bill's was very close). Flying in wave
these days w/o an artificial horizon is a judgment, not an airmanship, error.
Furthermore, Bill's accident was the result of very unusual winds, which is
just bad luck. The original post specifically mentioned fatalities.

I was giving examples that I thought illustrated the concept, and perhaps jog
peoples memories for more examples. They didn't need to be fatal for that purpose,
especially since I wasn't certain "loses" referred only to fatal events. Erik
Larson did have an artificial horizon, but as I recall, it was not on when he
entered cloud, and it didn't spin up fast enough to help him. I think Bill's
accident was not just bad luck, but partly the result of a purposeful reduction in
margins. As I recall, he wanted to land short to avoid pushing the plane back a
longer ways, instead of landing long as using the turnout further down the runway.