Glider Cockpit Safety

On Tuesday, September 11, 2018 at 8:24:26 AM UTC+1, wrote:
At the OSTIV meeting in Delft in 2007, a presentation was made before the delegates of Training and Safety Panel and Sailplane Development Panel by professor Antonio Dal Monte, the then Director of the Italian Institute for Sport Sciences. Prof Dal Monte had been involved in the official analysis of Senna's crash, and had also been instrumental in creating the detachable safety cockpit for racing speedboats after the fatal crash of Stefano Casiraghi, husband of Princess Caroline of Monaco while he was defending his world offshore title.

Having analized a series of fatal glider crashes, he concluded that the mass of the wing with the strong spar positioned right behind the head of the pilot was a major factor in the lethality of these crashes. As a matter of fact, a friend of mine was killed when his wooden Siebert 3 (similar to the Ka-6) spun in, and when picking up the pieces, we found the T-handle of one of the main bolts had been bent on impact. His head had been one foot in front of that bolt...

What Dal Monte proposed was a detachable safety cockpit for gliders, mounted on rails that would be angled approximately 30 degrees (more or less parallel to the backrest) and fixed by a suitable weak link. In case of a crash, the whole wing and rear fuselage would be guided under the cockpit instead of crushing it. He even suggested making a standard cockpit to be used by all manufacturers, as the real differences in profile at cockpit level are rather small and this would reduce the costs.

Unfortunately, the engineers from the main manufacturers, present at this reunion, simply laughed the proposition away without even seeming to consider the option. I always thought that, had the professor been a German instead of an Italian, they would at least have considered the pros and contras.. But Italy = opera + mafia in the head of many people. It is also Ferrari, Maserati, Lamborghini...

Same presentation by Professor Antonio Dal Monte was made to the IGC Plenum meeting.