End of Season Sunset Warning for SSA-OLC Participants

588 wrote:
Ramy wrote:

[re 91.119 (c) application to ridge flying altitudes]

Precisely, as sour as enforcing sunset time. This is exactly my point.


You truly see no difference, or are you just being troublesome in
order to entertain yourself on a non-flying afternoon?


No, I am just pointing out hypocrisy.

Precisely. if you're going to act as a policeman, you can't
selectively choose which rules you're going to enforce and which you're
going to ignore.

Either enforce all equally or none.


Mike



Ramy wrote:
588 wrote:
Ramy wrote:

[re 91.119 (c) application to ridge flying altitudes]

Precisely, as sour as enforcing sunset time. This is exactly my point.


You truly see no difference, or are you just being troublesome in
order to entertain yourself on a non-flying afternoon?


No, I am just pointing out hypocrisy.

Mike the Strike schrieb:

I wonder how long it will be before ridge fliers' igc files are
scrutinized for their proximity to terrain and they are asked for an
explanation?

You can see from the barograms displayed for every flight, that the
software for this is already implemented.

But aren't you allowed to fly closer to the ground than 500 ft if it is
required for operational reasons.

hans wrote:
Mike the Strike schrieb:

I wonder how long it will be before ridge fliers' igc files are
scrutinized for their proximity to terrain and they are asked for an
explanation?

You can see from the barograms displayed for every flight, that the
software for this is already implemented.

But aren't you allowed to fly closer to the ground than 500 ft if it is
required for operational reasons.

I thought you could fly closer than 500' as long as you aren't within
500 feet of people or structures.

Excellent point. Brian's article actually appeared in the February 2006
issue of Soaring. It describes a long ridge flight last fall. All
througout the description of his filght planning and execution he is
working backwards from a finish before sunset.

Papa3 wrote:
snip
There was a great article in Soaring maybe a year ago by Brian Collins
about a 1000K flight. One of the key elements of his flight planning
involved getting back on the ground before sunset. Clearly, he could
have gone on to rack up at least another 100K or 200K by ignoring the
FARs, but he chose to make the FARs a key part of his decision making.
So, to answer your question, "Yes, a pilot should give up soaring
early to be sure of getting home in time." Does that have to be
"an hour early"? No. If you fly it the same way you would typically
fly a MAT (i.e. leave a few close in turnpoints for the end of the
day), there's no reason to give up that much of the flyable day.

Erik Mann
LS8-18 P3

This nonsense is getting quite tedious and is complely
counterproductive. It does us no good to be airing our dirty laundry in
public. I have tried to make the case for keeping these things private,
but some people just don't get it.

But since the genie is out of the bottle, let me try once more to
correct the record:

Yuliy Gerchikov wrote:
"Doug Haluza" wrote in message
ps.com...

Actually, the OLC rules say they reserve the right to take action
against the pilot for airspace violations

Correct. But does it say anything about any other regulations that SSA seems
to turn on and off on a whim, or, correction, "as directed by the Board"?

There are no whimsical turns here. The SSA Board was concerned about
obvious violations in flight logs posted to OLC when they were in the
negotiation process with the OLC organizers. The Board adopted a policy
which has been in effect since last year.

If you joined this thread late, here is the link again:

http://www.ssa.org/download/SSA%20Po...Violations.pdf

, if they become aware of it.

Correct. But SSA, apparently, had nothing better to do but to take it upon
itself to *make* them aware of such cases -- apparently in a very selective
and retroactive way.

Actually we were made aware of the current cases after someone posted a
complaint to r.a.s. After I replied to the post asking people to make
these complaints in private, it must have released some pent-up demand,
since we suddenly received a number of complaints in a short time.

I have confirmed with the OLC International team that they do not wish
to sanction flights that the national OLC team does not wish to
sanction.

Correct. *That* is what has changed since SSA took over. You call it
sanctioning, I call it policing.

The OLC Team is relying on the National OLC organizations to handle the
burden of coordinating the activities of the OLC in each host country.
They would probably call it delegation.

The flights that have quietly disappeared were withdrawn voluntarily by
the pilots, once the problems were pointed out to them in private. Most
pilots have been quite reasoanble and decided to do the right thing.

Correct. Now we have in SSA the authority to tell us what's the right thing
to do.

We should not have to tell people what is right, and we certainly
should not have to tell them more than once.

flights that have received formal complaints that appear
to be valid have had the scores temporarily set to "null"

Oh. Formal complaints, huh? Given that, I quote, "the SSA has been checking
since the beginning of the year, and reporting to the SSA ExCom at their
request", I can't help but wonder how many of those "formal complaints" came
straight from the person or persons appointed by the SSA to "sanction" (your
word) flights. Would SSA-OLC like to publish those "formal complaints", so
that we don't have to speculate?

The Board asked for a report, and we did check and report earlier in
the year. Then we got busy doing other more productive things like
actually helping people. Perhaps we naively believed that the word had
gotten out, because we stopped checking until the complaint appeared on
r.a.s. Then we were not the only ones checking. No, we will not publish
the formal complaints for reasons that should be obvious. The
complaints were not solicited, other than through the r.a.s posting
asking that they be made in private.

snip

And let me ask once more for people to use proper discretion and
decorum in public--r.a.s is not a private forum for glider pilots, it's
a publicly searchable database. You need to think about the
consequences of what you post.

500' from people or structures if you are over water or "sparsely
populated" areas. I would think most places we fly would qualify as
sparsely populated.

Of course, and enterprising FAR nazi could go to Google Earth and find
coordinates of structures along high traffic ridge soaring areas...


Greg Arnold wrote:
hans wrote:
Mike the Strike schrieb:

I wonder how long it will be before ridge fliers' igc files are
scrutinized for their proximity to terrain and they are asked for an
explanation?

You can see from the barograms displayed for every flight, that the
software for this is already implemented.

But aren't you allowed to fly closer to the ground than 500 ft if it is
required for operational reasons.

I thought you could fly closer than 500' as long as you aren't within
500 feet of people or structures.

Mike the Strike wrote:
Precisely. if you're going to act as a policeman, you can't
selectively choose which rules you're going to enforce and which you're
going to ignore.

Either enforce all equally or none.

I'd like to hear from a few actual policemen on that subject,
informally of course. I'm pretty sure you are wrong on that score. The
oath aside, one of the first things learned on the job is precisely
that you have to choose your battles, so to speak. And if that lesson
doesn't come from the street, it comes from the system.


Jack

Yeah but Ramy those ridge flights on break one not three FAR's

Al

Ramy wrote:
5Z wrote:

Violating FARs is unsportsmanlike. An IGC file provides definitive
proof of the time and 3D location of the sailplane. The OLC has always
stated or implied that one must adhere to local flight regulations.
Doing anything else is unsportsmanlike.

So what about FAR Part 91 Sec. 91.119(c) which keeps get violated on
the ridges? Just look at the top scores in olc, there are some definite
proof there as well.

Ramy wrote:
I was told by Doug "the Board has directed us to look at Sunset and
Class-A" so it is indeed the board effort to monitor their members olc
flights instead of monitoring their financial officers...

come on, Ramy, it's not a like a platoon of auditors was pulled away
from watching the CFO and redirected to the OLC! One guy, who wasn't
watching the CFO to begin with, was directed to look at potential OLC
violations. The directors must attend to many things on their way to
promoting and fostering soaring.

--
Note: email address new as of 9/4/2006
Change "netto" to "net" to email me directly

Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA

"Transponders in Sailplanes" on the Soaring Safety Foundation website
www.soaringsafety.org/prevention/articles.html

"A Guide to Self-launching Sailplane Operation" at www.motorglider.org