Reason 28, 29, 30.... why I don't paraglide

On Mar 21, 6:45*am, "
wrote:
Anything that dangerous must be fun *On the other hand sailplanes
have a terrible safety record, training and experience doesn't seem to
help either.

I would rephrase...

Pilots who think training and experience doesn't matter tend to have
terrible safety records.

How many dead ex-world champion glider pilots are there? How many
active privately owned gliders in the US and how many fatals per year
in privately owned gliders? Soaring is not as safe as glider pilots
like to believe.
On Mar 21, 11:26*am, bildan wrote:
On Mar 21, 6:45*am, "
wrote:

Anything that dangerous must be fun *On the other hand sailplanes
have a terrible safety record, training and experience doesn't seem to
help either.

I would rephrase...

Pilots who think training and experience doesn't matter tend to have
terrible safety records.

On Mar 21, 11:26*am, bildan wrote:
On Mar 21, 6:45*am, "
wrote:

Anything that dangerous must be fun *On the other hand sailplanes
have a terrible safety record, training and experience doesn't seem to
help either.

I would rephrase...

Pilots who think training and experience doesn't matter tend to have
terrible safety records.

Just to make the counter argument, that the original article is
making.
"There are risks that training do not seem to be able to mitigate."

If your wing spar has an X % of breaking on every flight, no amount of
pilot training will reduce that percentage. You can not mitigate that
risk with pilot training, you must re-design the spar. The same is
with paragliders, there are inherent risks of collapse in the design.

On Mar 21, 4:51*pm, toad wrote:
On Mar 21, 11:26*am, bildan wrote:

On Mar 21, 6:45*am, "
wrote:

Anything that dangerous must be fun *On the other hand sailplanes
have a terrible safety record, training and experience doesn't seem to
help either.

I would rephrase...

Pilots who think training and experience doesn't matter tend to have
terrible safety records.

Just to make the counter argument, that the original article is
making.
"There are risks that training do not seem to be able to mitigate."

If your wing spar has an X % of breaking on every flight, no amount of
pilot training will reduce that percentage. *You can not mitigate that
risk with pilot training, you must re-design the spar. *The same is
with paragliders, there are inherent risks of collapse in the design.

Giving that there are way more paraglider pilots than glider pilots
worldwide, a quick look at the worldwide statistic at the above link
shows that paragliding is much safer than gliding. Same goes for hang
gliding. Of course their injury rate is much higher, but fatality rate
is much lower. Reason is simple: sailplanes are much less forgiving
for any mishap due to the energy involved. There is much less chance
to survive a glider accident than a HG/PG accident. You can walk (or
at least crawl) away from most HG/PG accidents, wish this was true for
gliding as well.

Ramy

On Mar 21, 5:51*pm, toad wrote:
On Mar 21, 11:26*am, bildan wrote:

On Mar 21, 6:45*am, "
wrote:

Anything that dangerous must be fun *On the other hand sailplanes
have a terrible safety record, training and experience doesn't seem to
help either.

I would rephrase...

Pilots who think training and experience doesn't matter tend to have
terrible safety records.

Just to make the counter argument, that the original article is
making.
"There are risks that training do not seem to be able to mitigate."

If your wing spar has an X % of breaking on every flight, no amount of
pilot training will reduce that percentage. *You can not mitigate that
risk with pilot training, you must re-design the spar. *The same is
with paragliders, there are inherent risks of collapse in the design.


Somehow there's a thought process that's found its way into aviation.
It's, "Gliding must be dangerous 'cause it sure ain't me that's
dangerous". Well, it is the pilot who's dangerous.

Humans are ALWAYS the weakest link. Training and experience
strengthen that link. Training and experience absolutely reduce risk.
Otherwise, why would anyone bother to train and test aviators?

For a long time now 95% of all GA accidents have been caused by pilot
error. It's not hard to ascribe the other 5% to pilots as well since
the pilot is charged with insuring his (it's usually guys) aircraft is
airworthy.

An airworthy spar in a glider flown by a well trained pilot who knows
and follows the rules has a 0% chance of breaking.

On 3/21/2011 6:00 PM, bildan wrote:


An airworthy spar in a glider flown by a well trained pilot who knows
and follows the rules has a 0% chance of breaking.

Wasn't that the point of the website? That the paraglider has a
relatively large, non-zero chance of "breaking", even though you are
well trained and follow the rules? I don't know if he's right, but
seemed to be reasonable argument, that many/most accidents began when
the paraglider became unairworthy. That seems different from our
sailplane experience, where I'd say most glider crashes involve an
airworthy glider.

--
Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA (change ".netto" to ".us" to
email me)

Have you factored out the unairworthy gliders made so by faulty assembly?

worthyAt 01:29 22 March 2011, Eric Greenwell wrote:
On 3/21/2011 6:00 PM, bildan wrote:


An airworthy spar in a glider flown by a well trained pilot who knows
and follows the rules has a 0% chance of breaking.

Wasn't that the point of the website? That the paraglider has a
relatively large, non-zero chance of "breaking", even though you are
well trained and follow the rules? I don't know if he's right, but
seemed to be reasonable argument, that many/most accidents began when
the paraglider became unairworthy. That seems different from our
sailplane experience, where I'd say most glider crashes involve an
airworthy glider.

--
Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA (change ".netto" to ".us" to
email me)

On Mar 22, 9:20*am, Nyal Williams wrote:
Have you factored out the unairworthy gliders made so by faulty assembly?


Why would anyone do that? Proper assembly is a pilot responsibility
whether he rigged the glider or not. Pilots have the final
responsibility to perform a pre-flight inspection which includes
checking for proper assembly. If a pilot crashes due to improper
assembly, he alone bears the blame. Again, training and experience is
critically important.

On Mar 22, 11:49*am, bildan wrote:
Again, training and experience is critically important.

billdan,

Are you missing the point on purpose, not understanding or just trying
to have a different discussion ?

Neither the referenced article nor my post disagree with the statement
"training and experience is critically important". But we are making
the statement "there are some risks not mitigable by training".

If you are trying to emphasize the importance of training, please do
so without diminshing the posibility of other issues.

Thanks
Todd Smith
3S

Bill, My comment was in reaction to the last statement in his post.

"That seems different from our sailplane experience, where I'd say most
glider crashes involve an airworthy glider."

My point was simply that a glider with an improper hookup is not
airworthy. I know there are a lot of accidents because of this
phenomenon, but I don't know how significant this is statistically.

This does not take away from your argument.

Best,

Nyal



At 15:49 22 March 2011, bildan wrote:
On Mar 22, 9:20=A0am, Nyal Williams wrote:
Have you factored out the unairworthy gliders made so by faulty
assembly?


Why would anyone do that? Proper assembly is a pilot responsibility
whether he rigged the glider or not. Pilots have the final
responsibility to perform a pre-flight inspection which includes
checking for proper assembly. If a pilot crashes due to improper
assembly, he alone bears the blame. Again, training and experience is
critically important.