Does How a (Sailplane) Pilot Thinks, Matter?

The biggest reason that I personally use a hard-deck is as the final safety check to dangerous thought processes in the cockpit. For me, it is just too easy to mentally assume all will work out and continue to push the limits of what I "feel" is safe in the moment versus what a removed unbiased observer would determine.

I think it comes back to the old saying about old and bold pilots...

On 4/3/2016 6:41 AM, Giaco wrote:
The biggest reason that I personally use a hard-deck is as the final safety
check to dangerous thought processes in the cockpit. For me, it is just too
easy to mentally assume all will work out and continue to push the limits
of what I "feel" is safe in the moment versus what a removed unbiased
observer would determine.

Excellent point summarizable (I think) as: Pilot, know thyself!

Not too long after I began flying retractable gear sailplanes, I settled on a
"hard deck for gear down/up" of 1,000' agl. While the "gear up" part won't
work if your ship has its release hook on the gear itself, the gear down bit
will. And - big surprise - what motivated me to begin using that particular
mental-crutch/memory-aid/practice was nearly forgetting to lower the gear the
first time I found myself "stretching a glide" back to the home field. I
remembered - only after it became clear at ~300'agl that I would, in fact,
make the field without a straight-in - that my mind had been completely
unemcumbered by any "pre-landing checklist bits" other than wind direction...

Bob W.

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.

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.

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.

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!

Well 2G the answer to your question of "what is the percieced benefit" for taking these type of risks, is just that, LIFE. Some of us are not content to just float around or live life in complete perceived safety. We are not afraid to take a calculate, repeat calculated risk when necessary to acomplish a greater goal. Yes it may only be a spot or two higher on the back page of the contest results, or it may be making it ten more miles in a 1-26 on a diamond goal flight. Those "goals" may be miniscule or meaningless within other peoples paradigm. But its the guy in the cockpit who chooses whats meaningfull or whats worth the "risk".

As to the consequences of those choices, everyone has to pay the piper. I worry less about the guy who is stretching his experience level in an intelligent fashion, than I do about the guy who floats around at the home field who hasnt learned a single new aspect of the sport in the last ten years of his flying primarily due to not wanting to stretch out of a confort zone. We all know countless guys who have never ever gone xc or made an outlanding.That guy who refuses to grow has in my opinion a higher potential for disaster, he hasnt had to make critical decisions in decades and when confronted with an unexpected event he's frozen. I've seen that a few times also myself with disasterous results.

My earlier post also has bearing on this, being what is perceived as a "huge risk" by one person due to his experience, is NOT a huge risk to someone else with experience and focussed mental acumen.

Everyone sets there own personal minimums. Mine change according to the conditions but also according to time. Early in the season or after having any long hiatus from flying ( in my case my mark is 4 weeks out of the cockpit), I fly very conservatively untill I get a handfull of flights under my belt. As I get sharper and more re-atuned to my bird, my minimums change and I push them out further. Similarly early in a flight, two hours or less when I am still amped up, and fresh, I will push if it is required. As the day gets longer and especially after an arduous period of decision making in flight, or late in a long flight I do one of two things. I actually shout at myself to wake up, think, get sharp, in order to remind myself that here is where I could get in trouble. If I am not responding, and I feel I am not totally mentally alert, i completely real it in, fly in total conservative mode, no low saves, no risky decisions, take what I have and be content with it.

The issue you brought up was " is it worth it?" Yes but only for the few whose life is centered totally around a soaring goal. That is why there are so few really great champions. Theres only a few willing to do the work required to get good enough to minimize rhe percieved risks thru experience and talent. Theres only a few who master the skills needed to minimize risk. Do great soaring pilots get killed? Yes. Is it pilot error 99% of the time? Yes. Is there a logical reason for each death? Yes. Should others who desire to be great at any "speed/mechanical" sport" give up their goals and fly in perfect percieved safety? Hell no.

Those that do real it in and who do not knowledgably push into becoming better at all things including low saves never ever find out how good they ever could have been. Those that do never reach their full potential. Do they stay alive? Maybe yes maybe no, but have they lived? Depending on their goals, if they are one of the few of the "driven" temperment, then the answer may be, not really.

For those who are not of this temperment, its an entirely different perspective and that is great, ok, fullfilling. They due to who they are, and how they are wired, have a different set of minimums. I would never ever attempt to place my minimums on anyone else. When teaching I teach total conservative flying and my students hear that, experience that, and I exemplify that. However when on my own and according to my level of experience, I fly my standards. The important factor here is understanding who your audience is.. Many times we argue over different perspectives on these topics because we are coming from different experience levels and different overall goals.
Dan

Getting back to the original question of this thread, the mental aspects, I think the overall temperment/personality of the pilot is an essential factor in this discussion.

Two extremes exist, the timid/reserved personality and the fearless/"I can do anything" guy. The timid flier will error on the conservative side, I use "error" deliberately as I think the pilot who doesnt grow beyond this extreem will be the guy who doesnt progress in real experience level irregardless of how many hours he has. He is an accident waiting to happen.

The second guy, the fearless "it wont happen to me" guy also is an accident waiting to happen. Many of these guys never get a chance to survive their folly in order to even recognize the mistake they made.

Thankfully most of us are somewhere in the middle between these two guys. I found however that it was helpfull for me personally to self analyse where I fit between these two guys. For the timid conservative flier, if he also has personal goals towaed xc or contest flying, he needs to realize that to reach his goals he is going to have to in a knowledgeable fashion, stretch into unknown territory.

For the guy who is toward the daredevel side of this spectrum, he needs to recognize his temperment and also in a similar fashion, find a means to curb his disregard for danger and understand the realities/consequences of his decisions.

This is not an easy thing for either guy. The timid guy feels pushed and some of them become the guys that try to impose their personal minimums on everyone else.

The fearless fellow feels held back. Many times this is the guy with a big ego driven by who knows what (many reasons) and he also in a different way, attempts to impose his perspective on everyone else.
Personally speaking due to my flying experience in the duster business, I trend toward the conservative side in agricultural flying. Just as 2G I have seen the results of needless pilot errors in my business. Thus I am super conservative when hauling around 2,000 lbs of fertilizer 12 ft above the ground at 135mph.

Conversely, I trend toward the fearless perspective when flying my glider on my own. In regards to the low level save question, I guess it is exactly due to my profession ( flying thousands of hours at below 100 ft) that I am not overly concerned when pulling off a save below 600ft. I do recognize this percieved "nonchalance " and mentally acknowledge it when i am in a low save situation but I guess due to my experience at doing so much low level turning, it doesnt worry me the same way it would others who dont fly at ground level except for final approach.

Other situations in soaring are an entirely different matter for me. For example, my ridge soaring experience is rather limited, and as a consequence, I am extremely conservative when playing on a turbulent rough ridge day. Other guys who "ridge soaring" is their thing laugh at my personal minimums when on a ridge, but my experience level is not like theres thus my minimums are way different and my temperment is different on the ridge.

As a side note, my wife likes my "ridge" temperment way better than my "low save" temperment.
Dan

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.

Bobw, I was thinking your last post was directed at me in miss stating the original intent of this thread, but I expanded the quote and see it was toward 2G , my last two posts must have crossed as you wee typing.

On Sunday, April 3, 2016 at 8:31:04 PM UTC-7, BobW wrote:
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.

A "low save" is one where spin recovery is not likely.

If you want to think that the statistical probability of dying while executing low saves is diminishingly small, so be it. When you know the pilot who died, as I do, it becomes more personal and real.

I don't particularly care what risks you are willing to take; my intended audience are those other low time pilots who might be reading this and acting on the advice.

Tom