Cockpit video recording -- the time is now.

All the situations described in the interview are not glider-specific, but rather general-traffic-specific. A transponder and/or ADS-B Out and ADS-B In will work better with a much bigger range in similar cases.

My opinion is that we don't need two systems in the gliders, and my great hope is in the recently started cooperation between the Flarm people and companies like uAvionix.



Speaking of which, and not wishing to side track this discussion, but I
thought this video was interesting:

https://flarm.com/learning-series-basel-flight-school/


.... its a Swiss power instructor talking about how and why he uses FLARM
and, as an instructor, why some he has a portable unit.


--
Martin | martin at
Gregorie | gregorie dot org

I agree that filming flights would greatly help solve many of these mysteries. However, the objections to MANDATING it are valid.

I am reminded of the detailed final accident report that was issued for Balleka's accident a few years ago. He had a lot of video footage the investigators were able to sift through, which clearly showed the cause of the accident, and was very instructive for those of us who read it. I learned a lot from it. Next year I plan to film as many of my flights as possible.

My Air Glide S feeds data to my Oudie which is recorded in the IGC file at 1Hz. Supplementary data is TAS, GS, TRK, VAR. You can determine gusts in the x and z axes from that data (without heading, you cannot determine gusts in the y axis).

I would like to see a 5 minute buffer with the attitude and 3-axis acceleration data which the Air Glide Sensor Unit produces at 20 Hz.

We are seeing a number of unexplained accidents and are conjecturing among control problems, structural failures, incapacitation and gusts (my own experience).

My take on incapacitation as a possibility is that while quite possible, it seems more conjectured with gliders than the record shows with powered aircraft.

That said any degree of hypoxia can degrade capacity and lead to a suspected loss of control or structural failure.

John Foster, is the stuff you read on Balleka's accident a few years ago available to the rest of us?

Boggs

AAIB report on Balleka accident

https://www.gov.uk/aaib-reports/aaib...-asw-24-g-cfng

Dan Marotta wrote on 10/2/2018 8:17 AM:
I think it's been pretty well established that the vast majority of accidents are
the result of pilot error.* A few examples:

Weather did not cause that accident; the pilot's decision to take off into it or
continue into it was the real cause.

That stall/spin was not the cause of the pilot's death, it was his poor
manipulation of the controls and his inability to recover from the results of his
actions that caused the stall/spin that killed him.

Mechanical failure was not the cause of that accident, it was the pilot's decision
to fly too close or into that thunder storm that caused the in flight breakup.

I could go on but I won't.* Folks are simply too quick to place blame anywhere but
on themselves when the stuff hits the fan.* I won't likely be crashing my Stemme
due to flying up a box canyon under a decaying cumulus (big down draft).* It's my
firm belief that it was not the weather that killed Bob Saunders, but his decision
to fly his aircraft into a situation from which there was little prospect of
recovery.

"Vast majority" - does that apply to glider accidents? We can all think of
accidents where the investigators could not definitely select the cause of the
accident. For example, how does one determine what caused the mishandling - a
medical event, poor training, panic, dehydration, glasses slipping in turbulence,
suicide?

Here's an example: a friend had his ailerons partially jam in flight, but he was
able to unjam them, and land normally. Eventually, the cause was determined to be
a small bit of excess epoxy that squeezed out during the joining of the wing
halves, broke loose at some point over the years, and worked it's way to the
aileron circuit during rigging or turbulence. You'd never find a cause like that
after an accident, but a camera on the pilot might show him struggling with the stick.

The camera isn't there to give the pilot an excuse (if you are right, it will do
just the opposite), it's to help the living sort out what really happened.

--
Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA (change ".netto" to ".us" to email me)
- "A Guide to Self-Launching Sailplane Operation"
https://sites.google.com/site/motorg...ad-the-guide-1
- "Transponders in Sailplanes - Dec 2014a" also ADS-B, PCAS, Flarm

http://soaringsafety.org/prevention/...anes-2014A.pdf

Roy,

Most of us routinely fly with multiple loggers and trackers. All of that data is just as subject to subpoena as the proposed video data. Logger and tracker data is just as useful in each of your examples: FAA airspace, crazy ladies, insurance companies and divorce lawyers. Yet, I've not heard about anyone being plagued by subpoenas. I'll agree that it's a potential issue; but not one of much concern considering the practical equivalence of what we are already all doing routinely. In fact, most guys are now posting each and every flight to the internet for all to see.

Your point about not being easy to mandate was acknowledged at the onset. It's doable; but only if there were the corporate will to know why the accidents are happening. It's not necessarily an easy sell since the amount that people care about such things does vary.

You wanted to make comparison with PowerFlarm adoption; but that's not a great counter-example since we have achieved virtually 100% adoption of Flarm now at SSA race events. Such things are achievable. My club is getting pretty small these days, but around here almost everyone flies with PowerFlarm. The contemplated video logger would be a much smaller, simpler and cheaper device than PowerFlarm.

On Monday, October 1, 2018 at 6:06:54 PM UTC-7, Roy B. wrote:
"I'm only talking about giving up my privacy when I have a reportable accident."

Sorry Steve -but life and litigation don't work that way. Once you "mandate" the creation and maintenance of the data source it is out there for anybody to subpoena:

The insurance company that doesn't want to pay a claim, The FAA when it wants to revoke your license for busting airspace, the divorce lawyer who wants to see if you really were on a gliding vacation that weekend, the crazy lady who bought a house on airport road but doesn't like towplane noise, . . . they all can get the videos.

And how do we do it? What percentage of the glider fleet now has FLARM (which makes infinitely more sense if something must be "mandated")? 1% maybe? My A&I has to take a course in video installation? CDs have to check video samples before a contest like ENLs? And to what end? Do you really need a video to diagnose a stall spin in? Would a video explain the Arcus/Nephi accident that an experienced pilot who watched and felt it happen can't explain? Is a guy screwing around before his (unexpected) fatal accident not going to disable the camera? Is it coincidence that police and military body cameras have a remarkable failure rate in the field?

Let's all get behind this idea and push it out the window . . .

ROY

On Tuesday, October 2, 2018 at 4:16:24 PM UTC-7, George Haeh wrote:
AAIB report on Balleka accident

https://www.gov.uk/aaib-reports/aaib...-asw-24-g-cfng

Accident less than two years ago, and report seven months ago.

"a few years ago"

Steve:
let me briefly respond to your points - but in reverse order.

FLARM is an active and useful accident avoidance device - albeit at a cost. Yet everybody still resisted making it mandatory. Although it is useful in the air to avoid collisions it has achieved less than 1% penetration into gliders operating and flights being conducted. Competition flying (where FLARM is well accepted now) is a microscopic subset of glider flying in the US and the accidents that you want to learn about are not happening for the most part in SSA sanctioned contests.

But your camera idea does not even qualify as an accident avoidance device - it's a post accident diagnostic device that might "possibly" assist in some types of accident investigations if it captures useful diagnostic information and if it survives the crash. And it also has a cost particularly if it is to be made crash-worthy. To use a silly illustration of the comparison with FLARM - it's the difference between Health insurance (that keeps you or gets you healthy) and private autopsy insurance (that tells others why you are dead). Of course nobody buys or sells autopsy insurance - there is little perceived value in it and the government does a generally acceptable job doing it free. The same will be true of your cameras and any attempt to make them mandatory: Little perceived value for the cost and the government does a generally acceptable job at accident investigation.

I also disagree that an electronic stream of GPS data points that requires an intermediary program to collate and present into what is essentially a cartoon presentation of the flight (like SeeYou) is the same type of invasion of privacy as a video which is immediately usable, publishable and understandable. Yes- we all fly with multiple GPS trackers but I retain the option (even in a SSA contest) of refusing to submit my flight log and accepting the penalty for that. And need I mention that none of the tracking devices I use carry the problem of being focused on the control stick area while I am fitting and using the catheter in flight? And if you say "OK - we can turn it off then" - you have just made it non mandatory and ruined your whole argument.

In the end Steve, your strongest argument is "We gotta do something." That maybe true and I respect the feeling - but it's not this mandatory camera idea that we should do.

All the best,
ROY

Roy, where the “less than 1%� powerflarm adoption came from? Are you in the US?
In my region (region 11) most gliders have powerflarm, in some areas the adoption is close to 90%. I am not talking contests.
It is hard to take seriously anything else you write when you make such an absurd claim.

Ramy