Too many accidents

Fair enough, but I haven't landed gear up because I have had great
training and have good habits in the landing pattern.Â* And "5J, left
base, gear down, 26" is a lot less congestive than a lot of
dissertations I've heard on the radio.

On 9/8/2018 8:37 AM, wrote:
On Saturday, September 8, 2018 at 7:30:29 AM UTC-7, Dan Marotta wrote:
Someone asked me recently, "Why do you always say, 'Gear down and
locked', over the radio when you turn base?"Â* The stupidity of the
question meant to me that there was no answer which would satisfy him.


I suppose a radio call adds another check, that a ground observer might hear, look up, notice something, and have a radio at hand. I personally doubt it adds very much, and radio congestion detracts from overall safety.

'There are no stupid questions, only stupid answers'



--
Dan, 5J

On Friday, September 7, 2018 at 10:09:48 AM UTC-6, Roy B. wrote:
"First, I'd wind my watch..." meaning he would take a few seconds to think before acting.

The problem, WB, is that we are old enough to remember watches that wind.
Most of our students have never seen one.

I was doing a ground school once and mentioned a "slide rule" and one of the kids piped up "What's a slide rule?" And before I could answer another kid said, "It was this old calculating thing - kinda like an abacus". We really are old.
Roy

THAT is funny...

On Sat, 08 Sep 2018 10:08:05 -0700, archerzulu wrote:

On Friday, September 7, 2018 at 10:09:48 AM UTC-6, Roy B. wrote:
"First, I'd wind my watch..." meaning he would take a few seconds to
think before acting.

The problem, WB, is that we are old enough to remember watches that
wind.
Most of our students have never seen one.

I was doing a ground school once and mentioned a "slide rule" and one
of the kids piped up "What's a slide rule?" And before I could answer
another kid said, "It was this old calculating thing - kinda like an
abacus". We really are old.
Roy

THAT is funny...

If you have or can borrow a Curta calculator, it would be fun to see what
the kids make of that!

If you've never seen a Curta, it was an small, not quite pocket sized,
mechanical calculator, designed prewar and produced from 1945/46 on and a
must-have device until electronic calculators started to appear in the
'70s. The rally car folks loved them. Photos and description he
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curta



--
Martin | martin at
Gregorie | gregorie dot org

Dan Marotta wrote on 9/8/2018 8:49 AM:
Fair enough, but I haven't landed gear up because I have had great training and
have good habits in the landing pattern.* And "5J, left base, gear down, 26" is a
lot less congestive than a lot of dissertations I've heard on the radio.

On 9/8/2018 8:37 AM, wrote:
On Saturday, September 8, 2018 at 7:30:29 AM UTC-7, Dan Marotta wrote:
Someone asked me recently, "Why do you always say, 'Gear down and
locked', over the radio when you turn base?"* The stupidity of the
question meant to me that there was no answer which would satisfy him.


I suppose a radio call adds another check, that a ground observer might hear,
look up, notice something, and have a radio at hand. I personally doubt it adds
very much, and radio congestion detracts from overall safety.

'There are no stupid questions, only stupid answers'

Have you considered a gear warning device of some sort? I haven't landed gear up,
either, and I don't say anything on the radio, but I have used a variety of gear
up warnings, including a welding clamp, a buzzer, and a vario. The systems have
saved me three times so far.

The radio call works best when someone on the ground enforces it, as we did at our
recent motorglider camp at Parowan, UT. If your entry to downwind didn't include
the "gear down and locked" phrase, a friendly voice on the radio asked you about
your gear position.

I also have a spoilers unlocked warning. It activates when the spoilers aren't
locked as the airspeed exceeds 25 knots.

--
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
I

"I personally doubt it adds very much"

I believe a radio call does add value. I added that to my routine last year.

By making the call every time, I double check before I make the call. I notice if I don't make the call as I make it mid downwind every flight. Pass midfield, no call - oops - I missed something.

YMMV -

Lou

" You can establish margins, but Mother Nature at any time
can blow right through them and put you into a totally
new aerodynamic situation.

Margins are not static, and need to be adjusted for Mother Nature.

Margins on a clear, light wind day differ greatly from those on a day with, e.g., thunderstorms in the vicinity. "

Question: With a windsock showing 8 kt and wind of 15 kt at 300' on a cross country day, how much provision should be made for possible windshear?


After some answers have been submitted, I will share the windshear I once encountered in these conditions.

I've had great training and good habits, too. But after 50 years of flying, I landed gear up the first time. It was a long (50+ miles) final glide into Harris Hill at the nationals a few years ago, below glide path nearly the entire way. To my knowledge, no one had been ridge soaring that task but I thought the wind favored it as I approached across the valley. I connected with the Hill just below the crest and turned left to run across it. I gained enough on one short pass that when the finish line/taxiway came into view out my right wing, I simply turned right on very short final to land/finish. I appeared low from behind the trees and turned in so suddenly that no one had a chance to radio a warning. My primary concern was that I was flying downwind and needed to get it down so I didn't roll off the back of the Hill, and also avoiding the crop of finishers landing (properly) in the opposite direction.

I never shifted into "landing" mode. Call it tunnel vision: I was focused completely on finishing until the last few seconds and didn't even think about my landing checklist. There's an emergency field below the Hill that was available if the ridge hadn't worked; I deduced later that probably gave me one less reason to think about landing vs. finishing.

I'd had a gear warning horn in another glider but landed one day in the early 70s with it going off in my ear anyway (the wheel was down but the lever wasn't locked all the way over against the cockpit wall, which didn't cause a problem). I always figured: why have a system if I was going to subconsciously ignore it anyway?

Since then I've used a clip that I move from the gear handle to the dive brake handle when I release, and back again after the gear goes down. I could probably ignore this one, too, but it would be more difficult. That doesn't mean I couldn't make the same mistake again and I'll take all the help I can get. I called "gear down" in the pattern for a while after that. I may start doing it again. Or install the microswitches and connect it to my ClearNav vario this winter.

I was very depressed the night after I bellied in. I was gratified but amazed by the number of experienced pilots who dropped by the hangar to reassure me by confessing they had done it, too, some of them twice, one at an airshow in front of spectators. If the saying about "there are those who have and those who will" applies, there are a lot fewer of "those who will" remaining.

I don't scoff at anything pilots do to avoid making mistakes. None of us is perfect.

Chip Bearden

I landed gear up last May, and I am (rightfully) embarrassed about it. I was on a long final glide into Moriarty, attempting to set the "digital inputs" from my airbrake and landing gear switches into my new LXNAV S80 properly to give me the lovely British lady's voice to "Check Gear" when the airbrakes were opened with the landing gear retracted. I couldn't get them to operate correctly, and I concluded that one of the two microswitches on the airbrake rod or landing gear mechanism was faulty or misaligned.

So I drop into the pattern, and make my radio call, "Moriarty Traffic, MSM over the Water Tower turning left downwind. Gear is down. Moriarty Traffic."

Whereupon, I operated the gear handle in the opposite direction from what is recommended in every flight manual, hangar flying session or other basic discussion of dumbass maneuvers involving aircraft. Yep, the gear was already down after I gave up on the futile attempt to make the S80 talk to me.

After the disconcerting scraping noises had stopped (short of the taxiway turnoff, as you might expect) and my supply of four letter words was depleted, helpful friends got me off the runway.

So while undergoing repairs, and talking to the LXNAV distributor, I discover that the "digital inputs" for airbrake and landing gear switches, while mentioned in the LXNAV S80 manual, are not actually SUPPORTED by the software!

Silly me! Learned a lesson, and installed a set of flashing red/blue LED lights in the panel. No mistaking those, and I believe they are superior to another beeping/honking/tweeting audio noises that modern instruments like to inflict.

But, as is my practice, I had called "Gear is down!" so the folks on the ground would recognize me as a Superior Aviator who always follows a set procedure and never would do something as stupid as landing gear up. Therefore, there was no reason for anyone on the ground (with access to a radio) to visually check my gear status and perhaps make me aware that financial difficulty was in my immediate future.

Yup, a painful experience, but fortunately, only to my ego and wallet. No animals were harmed during this event.

On Saturday, September 8, 2018 at 7:32:30 PM UTC-7, wrote:
I landed gear up last May, and I am (rightfully) embarrassed about it. I was on a long final glide into Moriarty, attempting to set the "digital inputs" from my airbrake and landing gear switches into my new LXNAV S80 properly to give me the lovely British lady's voice to "Check Gear" when the airbrakes were opened with the landing gear retracted. I couldn't get them to operate correctly, and I concluded that one of the two microswitches on the airbrake rod or landing gear mechanism was faulty or misaligned.

So I drop into the pattern, and make my radio call, "Moriarty Traffic, MSM over the Water Tower turning left downwind. Gear is down. Moriarty Traffic."

Whereupon, I operated the gear handle in the opposite direction from what is recommended in every flight manual, hangar flying session or other basic discussion of dumbass maneuvers involving aircraft. Yep, the gear was already down after I gave up on the futile attempt to make the S80 talk to me.

After the disconcerting scraping noises had stopped (short of the taxiway turnoff, as you might expect) and my supply of four letter words was depleted, helpful friends got me off the runway.

So while undergoing repairs, and talking to the LXNAV distributor, I discover that the "digital inputs" for airbrake and landing gear switches, while mentioned in the LXNAV S80 manual, are not actually SUPPORTED by the software!

Silly me! Learned a lesson, and installed a set of flashing red/blue LED lights in the panel. No mistaking those, and I believe they are superior to another beeping/honking/tweeting audio noises that modern instruments like to inflict.

But, as is my practice, I had called "Gear is down!" so the folks on the ground would recognize me as a Superior Aviator who always follows a set procedure and never would do something as stupid as landing gear up. Therefore, there was no reason for anyone on the ground (with access to a radio) to visually check my gear status and perhaps make me aware that financial difficulty was in my immediate future.

Yup, a painful experience, but fortunately, only to my ego and wallet. No animals were harmed during this event.

I have added a prominent, green, gear down LED on the panel of my new ASH 31Mi. I prefer the idea of a positive confirmation that I am OK to land vs a warning that something is wrong.

Tom

On Wednesday, September 5, 2018 at 3:37:44 PM UTC-4, wrote:
I have been soaring since the late 70's and can recall many accidents in the past. It seems, however, that recently the accident rate has spiked. While I don't have exact data to confirm this (I'm sure our friends at the SSF have it), it seems that we are experiencing higher than average accidents and fatalities.

I find myself wondering what is causing this. Is it the complexity of gliders emerging in recent years? Is it the age/experience of the pilots? Lack of training? I don't have the answers but I would be interested in other's thoughts on the issue. One accident is too many and loss of any life is tragic.

Greig
Two videos you should view to heighten your safety. The first is especially an eye opener regarding the inadvertant spin:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeI2...&feature=share

Bruno shares two thoughts about mountain flying:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Alk-q4golx0

Fly safely, my friends,

November Bravo