Glider Crash Argentina

On Friday, February 28, 2014 10:06:23 AM UTC-5, Waveguru wrote:
I often think that the roll of fear, or high levels of anxiety, are not talked about enough. It's very hard to fly when you are scared sh*tless. I think being scared is a major factor in most accidents. I think along with airspeed, and fly the airplane, we should also throw in calm down. I think many people are literally scared to death.



Boggs

I think back to the one time when I dinged an airplane. It was definitely a final glide coffin corner event exacerbated by being scared s***less and several other factors. I was just lucky. 1991 Lancaster SC regional. Only my 3rd year of competing and the first time at a completely new area. Bad weather on practice day, so unfamiliar with the overall area. Pre gps. Weather starts out good but deck moves in and day shuts down. Obvious this is the last climb, and I top out, then head off. Lots of little towns with 4 roads a water tower and railroad tracks. Prayer wheel says I'll make it at about pattern altitude. Field choices good up to a few miles out but a little spottier close in. Is this actually Lancaster? Crap - it's not. Notch the nerves up even higher. Tunnel vision. Staring at altimeter and map. Mouth is dry. Tap dancing on rudder pedals (what I do when I'm tense). Finally, see airport. I made it. Fly a tight, low pattern and opt for the taxiway (a tougher option) to save tow back from apron (obviously not thinking clearly). Mush it on semi-stalled just short of the taxiway lip and wipe out the undercarriage. Just imagine if that wasn't the airport and I had to make a difficult field landing over high trees or cross a ditch. I think the added pressure we put on ourselves that we HAVE to get back to the home field and only admitting defeat at the last second degrades our airmanship by a significant margin.

P3

On Friday, February 28, 2014 9:27:22 AM UTC-6, Papa3 wrote:

I think back to the one time when I dinged an airplane.

Great story P3.

The insidious part: if you are tired, stressed, getting more and more behind the curve in your decisions, losing situational awareness, you are very unlikely to recognize this mental state and its dangers in the air. In my mishaps -- no damage so far thank goodness -- I have been amazed on reviewing the flight to see myself getting further behind the curve, and not noticing it.

On one flight, 600 miles at Mifflin ending with a difficult transition and final glide, I literally couldn't get out of the cockpit I was so exhausted at the end. But did not recognize that state when doing the last glide.

I'm trying to build in an alarm bell that notices this mental state and jogs me in to a "do something NOW" to cut off the inevitable. Something like, in your situation, stopping and doing a pattern to a good field from 1000 feet.

John Cochrane

Thanks, Erik and John, for talking openly about stress related piloting skill degradation. It's a very valuable discussion because it isn't brought up much, and thus most pilots don't know to guard against it. Here's a couple of things that happened to me because of things I didn't know.

One was during a downwind off-field landing, which was going well until on very short final I saw a single wire electric fence across my flight path. I overflew the fence, but then needed to do a ground loop to stop before hitting some rapidly approaching trees. Problem was, I hadn't ever been told how to ground loop properly. I did unload the tail to avoid over stressing it, but I didn't raise the low wing aileron, and the 6 inch long grass destroyed it. What I needed to know was that if you ever have to do an intentional ground loop, you must move the stick like you're doing a diving turn.

The second occurred while trying to land at a small grass farmers airstrip. I'd never seen it in person, but it was in my turn point file because it had showed up on Google Earth. The problem was, it had been abandoned since the last time the GE photo had been taken. What I learned from that was it's a good idea at the beginning of the season to take a drive to verify small airstrips are still in existence.

-John, Q3