US Competition Pilot Poll and Election

On Tuesday, October 4, 2016 at 6:51:19 PM UTC-7, jfitch wrote:

Interesting that the question about FLARM is inherently biased against. This is a textbook case of asking a question while begging a specific response. The question is something like "Did focusing your attention on FLARM cause a loss of situational awareness..." I consider it far more likely that focusing my attention on FLARM increased my situational awareness and said so in the comments.

A more appropriate wording would be, "Considering the information provided by, and the attention required by the FLARM display, how did use of FLARM affect your overall situational awareness?" This is much closer to a neutral question. But we know where the hearts of the writers lie.....


You should have seen the first draft... :-)

I agree your wording is more neutral. The comment box was provided specifically for the type of elaboration you make here. Feel free to fill it up. It will get read and summarized.

We already know that Flarm map-type displays help overall situational awareness a lot, so on average we are better off for having them. We don't really need to poll on that. What this question is mostly about is any potential secondary effects, including specific examples of how they come about. It wasn't clear in the drafting process that totally neutral wording would get anything other than answers about the primary as opposed to secondary effects. With more effort we might have come up with a less provocative phrasing that still fits the objective - feedback noted.

Since the introduction of flight computers - heck, variometers too, people have worried about "head in the cockpit" disease. In this case your head in the cockpit looking as something that sees better than you do ought to be a good thing most of the time. Most of the time isn't necessarily all of the time so we're asking about what probably would be very rare situations, but worth getting some data about.

9B

On Wednesday, October 12, 2016 at 5:51:20 PM UTC-4, Andy Blackburn wrote:
On Tuesday, October 4, 2016 at 6:51:19 PM UTC-7, jfitch wrote:

Interesting that the question about FLARM is inherently biased against. This is a textbook case of asking a question while begging a specific response. The question is something like "Did focusing your attention on FLARM cause a loss of situational awareness..." I consider it far more likely that focusing my attention on FLARM increased my situational awareness and said so in the comments.

A more appropriate wording would be, "Considering the information provided by, and the attention required by the FLARM display, how did use of FLARM affect your overall situational awareness?" This is much closer to a neutral question. But we know where the hearts of the writers lie.....


You should have seen the first draft... :-)

I agree your wording is more neutral. The comment box was provided specifically for the type of elaboration you make here. Feel free to fill it up. It will get read and summarized.

We already know that Flarm map-type displays help overall situational awareness a lot, so on average we are better off for having them. We don't really need to poll on that. What this question is mostly about is any potential secondary effects, including specific examples of how they come about. It wasn't clear in the drafting process that totally neutral wording would get anything other than answers about the primary as opposed to secondary effects. With more effort we might have come up with a less provocative phrasing that still fits the objective - feedback noted.

Since the introduction of flight computers - heck, variometers too, people have worried about "head in the cockpit" disease. In this case your head in the cockpit looking as something that sees better than you do ought to be a good thing most of the time. Most of the time isn't necessarily all of the time so we're asking about what probably would be very rare situations, but worth getting some data about.

9B

Actually the first draft didn't have either of the 2 narrative questions.
Both questions were included to permit commentary on the favorable aspects of FLARM use and the possible unfavorable aspect.
Jfitch presumably has the opinion that we should only look at the favorable.. Our objective was to generate useful balanced feedback as opposed to just "Yes sir, yes sir, 3 bags full".
Hopefully pilots will give us their views.
UH

I suggested to RC that the preamble to "US VS FAI rules" should include a quiz to see if pilots opining actually had any idea what was in said rules. They wisely refused the idea, but its outcome is interesting to speculate about.

John Cochrane BB

On Wednesday, October 12, 2016 at 2:29:26 PM UTC-5, Andy Blackburn wrote:
On Tuesday, October 11, 2016 at 6:43:17 AM UTC-7, wrote:

Wilbur,
Do I know you? Have you been racing at all? Why do you hide behind that name? Is your real name Sean? I for one still enjoy glider races, we do them at our club every weekend. You should have learned from the present election mud fight that negativity gets you exactly nowhere.
Herb Kilian, J7

is an email address of John Miller, who, among other duties, serves as a PR agent for a very excellent glider racer...many people say he is probably the best racer in the history of soaring, ever, believe me.

You can read more about Wilbur/John he

https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...6e0_story.html

;-)

9B

You nailed it, Andy, thanks for good laugh. To Wilbur, keep up the good work of promoting your causes - love what you did 114 years ago for aviation with your bro!

On Wednesday, October 12, 2016 at 4:34:54 PM UTC-7, wrote:
On Wednesday, October 12, 2016 at 5:51:20 PM UTC-4, Andy Blackburn wrote:
On Tuesday, October 4, 2016 at 6:51:19 PM UTC-7, jfitch wrote:

Interesting that the question about FLARM is inherently biased against. This is a textbook case of asking a question while begging a specific response. The question is something like "Did focusing your attention on FLARM cause a loss of situational awareness..." I consider it far more likely that focusing my attention on FLARM increased my situational awareness and said so in the comments.

A more appropriate wording would be, "Considering the information provided by, and the attention required by the FLARM display, how did use of FLARM affect your overall situational awareness?" This is much closer to a neutral question. But we know where the hearts of the writers lie.....


You should have seen the first draft... :-)

I agree your wording is more neutral. The comment box was provided specifically for the type of elaboration you make here. Feel free to fill it up.. It will get read and summarized.

We already know that Flarm map-type displays help overall situational awareness a lot, so on average we are better off for having them. We don't really need to poll on that. What this question is mostly about is any potential secondary effects, including specific examples of how they come about. It wasn't clear in the drafting process that totally neutral wording would get anything other than answers about the primary as opposed to secondary effects. With more effort we might have come up with a less provocative phrasing that still fits the objective - feedback noted.

Since the introduction of flight computers - heck, variometers too, people have worried about "head in the cockpit" disease. In this case your head in the cockpit looking as something that sees better than you do ought to be a good thing most of the time. Most of the time isn't necessarily all of the time so we're asking about what probably would be very rare situations, but worth getting some data about.

9B

Actually the first draft didn't have either of the 2 narrative questions.
Both questions were included to permit commentary on the favorable aspects of FLARM use and the possible unfavorable aspect.
Jfitch presumably has the opinion that we should only look at the favorable. Our objective was to generate useful balanced feedback as opposed to just "Yes sir, yes sir, 3 bags full".
Hopefully pilots will give us their views.
UH

I do not think you should just look at the unfavorable, which is the only information solicited by the question. Against a background of dislike for Flarm by a majority of the RC as documented ad nauseum in other threads, this is how I, and others I have spoken to, took it. Do you have the same curiosity about the focus of attention on moving map displays, multicolor flashy varios, and thermalling assistants?

Hear ye, hear ye, thank you Sir Herbert for those kind words my brethren.

Four score and 114 years ago, my brother and I designed this sport to attract many. We, as Americans wanted nothing more than to see a dominance in our sport at the world level. We hoped others like DB would add to our thoughts in a Concordian kind of way to one day win one for the homeland. But unfortunately, we keep getting our butts handed to us. Yet, too many pompous A-holes want to politicize the sport and F it up for the rest of us by trying to go the opposite way and confuse the best of the best by practicing a different racing game here in America.

In My Humble Opinion, as the founder of flight...

On Friday, October 14, 2016 at 7:12:57 AM UTC+13, Luke Szczepaniak wrote:
The biggest challenge for youth in North America is access to gliders
that can be flown XC let alone taken away to a contest (club policy not
performance issue).

The biggest challenge for "full time" employed people is the extremely
limited vacation time in North America.

What would you say is typical in the USA and Canada these days?

The two countries I know about (legal minimums):

New Zealand (where I'm from): 20 days paid vacation, plus 11 days paid holidays.

Russia (where I'm working now): 20 days[1] paid vacation, plus 12 days paid holidays, plus 5 day[2] New Year holiday.

[1] described as 28 days, but if you are forced to take entire weeks off then those will include Saturdays and Sundays in the 28 days. My employer forces one planned vacation of at least 14 consecutive calendar days, which means two weekends of "paid vacation" are lost, but the other 14 days can be fitted around (not on) weekends and public holidays as desired. So, effectively: 24

[2] Jan 7 is Christmas, and is always observed on the 7th, whether weekend or weekday. In addition, Jan 1-5 are holidays, but if some of those days fall on a weekend then they are moved to the 6th or 8th (only).

US Aircraft industry typically starts at 10 days vacation per year that you can decide what you do with, plus a couple of three day weekends during the flying season. Also typically a 4 day weekend in November, and often, the week off between Christmas and New Year's day. After 5 years with a company, you will likely get 15 vacation days a year, and after 10 years, you will likely get 20 vacation days a year. When I was "coming up the ranks", it was 15 days after 10 years with a company, and 20 days after 20 years.

And this is possibly a bit above what is "normal" for the US. So, no. We don't get much paid time off from our work.

Steve Leonard

Dear Luke,

Back in my day, I busted my A$$ to get the Wright Flyer to have a 3/1 L/D. Regardless of who was first, in my time, I was WINNING.

While soaring has become less popular, year after year, vacation weeks have not changed much. All I allowed at the Wright Factory was 2 weeks off. That was a century ago.

Vacation remains unchanged, soaring participation HAS changed. Boom! Mic Drop!

Thank you for your thought, but soaring was once much more popular. Orville just rolled over in his grave when he heard that about all this mess.

Strong thermals, cloudstreets, and tailwinds,

Wilbur

On Thursday, October 13, 2016 at 8:58:56 AM UTC-7, jfitch wrote:

I do not think you should just look at the unfavorable, which is the only information solicited by the question.

I understand your point, but the purpose of the question was not to collect positive/negative "votes" about Flarm distraction, it was to understand what sort of distraction "events" might exist, if any. The comment box is the primary source of information, the Yes/No button merely sets this up, but it cannot be used as a statistical tool to make judgements about frequency of occurrence. We are collecting anecdotes to understand what, if any, meaningful scenarios might be occurring - nothing more. You can't make statistical inferences from anecdotes and the comment box(es) are the main source of data.

On reflection, we could have structured the question without the Yes/No selection entirely. It's main purpose is to tee up the comment box.

Against a background of dislike for Flarm by a majority of the RC as documented ad nauseum in other threads, this is how I, and others I have spoken to, took it. Do you have the same curiosity about the focus of attention on moving map displays, multicolor flashy varios, and thermalling assistants?

There's a diversity of views on the RC and issues are discussed vigorously and openly. Distraction is a generic issue so, yes, those devices (especially fiddling with computers which have become more complex) are of concern. It's just that Flarm is the new source of information that *might* attract additional attention. I wouldn't read too much into the question focusing just on the new thing.

9B