Hard Deck

At 19:55 02 February 2018, Steve Koerner wrote:
Chip's great stories reminded me of one of my most magnificent
experiences in a glider. This was coming back to Crystaire after a
long flight decades ago. The sun had set and the gliderport was
closed and completely vacated.. I did a long low pass westbound
down the length of the runway then pulled up for a right downwind.
As I pulled up, right there, were two eagles circling together to the
right in a 1 knot end-of-day thermal. I joined the two eagles
across that thermal for a few hundred feet of climb before continuing
my landing. Obviously I was quite low when I made those
thermalling turns yet I am as sure now as I was then that making
those turns was perfectly safe for me and for all other human
beings. The air was still -- there was essentially no chance of
encountering any degree of sink or turbulence at that particular
occasion.

Exactly that will never happen again. But something similar might.
I choose liberty please. Pretty please.

Steve, I had a similar experience. It was on October 24, 1998. One
of our club pilots had passed away due to cancer, and his wife Linda
(who is still a pilot in our club) decided to hold his memorial service
on our airport. She requested that I tow out at the end of the
service and do a low contest style flying finish dumping water ballast
as a tribute to Louis, her husband. I was only too happy to oblige.
It was a beautiful Fall day in New England with calm winds and
pretty stable air. I towed out near the end of the service and came
back dumping my water. As I neared the top of my pull-up, I saw a
hawk circling just ahead and to the right. I joined his thermal and
found that he had a nice steady and smooth 2 knots all the way
around. I climbed with the hawk for a few turns gaining altitude
while giving myself enough time to ensure that I had been able to
dump all of my water in case one wing was dumping slower than
the other. I could have stayed with the hawk and climbed away,
but I pulled the plug to join the rest of our club down below. It
was as if Louis had been there giving me a lift...... The airport was
closed except to me. The wx was perfect, and I was right off the
end of our runway. It was perfectly safe as far as I was concerned.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/40eVcQ9t3lXF3mSk2

RO

On Friday, February 2, 2018 at 6:44:56 PM UTC-7, Andy Blackburn wrote:
On Friday, February 2, 2018 at 9:54:53 AM UTC-8, wrote:

I don't have data on earlier accident and fatality rates but it would be great if someone smart who's inclined that way could analyze it (9B???).

Chip Bearden

You correctly identified my inclination at least.

Yes, I have a comprehensive database of all US glider accidents - fatal and non-fatal - for about 20 years. I did it a few years back, so it's not 100% current and doesn't include all the commentary It also won't include anything not reported to the feds or capture any scary moments that people got away with with only emotional scars.

Obviously we are talking about relatively small probabilities of catastrophic events, under a very specific set of circumstances - and a further subset within that based on particular human motives (where points at stake materially mattered but disinclination to landing out didn't). You'd need a pretty deliberate analytical and research approach to try to try to quantify that.

Ultimately what I think you will end up with is a conversation with a small number of dead pilots and/or broken gliders on one side, a notion of freedom on the other and in the middle some sort of view about whether the behavior in question makes a difference competitively or would respond favorably to a change in how we keep score. I think the answers to these last two questions ought to be looked at before we devolve further into a discussion about the acceptable ratio of carnage to freedom.

I remain skeptical that the proposed solution has a material influence over this sort of behavior or even if it did (assuming that we don't care about the body count aspect for the moment) that people are winning contests with a "below 500' thermalling" strategy. A SeeYou script could probably pull out all the low thermalling and the finish order would give you a sense of the competitive correlation (I bet it's negative). A "what were you thinking" survey of offenders might reveal something about whether the behavior responds to points - I think mostly not, but that's a survey of one (me).

IMO the view is probably not worth the climb, but I'm always open to looking at data.

Andy Blackburn
9B

Andy, late 60's to early 70's had falling fiberglass from close to/excessive Vne starts, maybe @ El Mirage contests from flutter....Diamants?

From P3's penalty post, seriously, you just don't "bite and tear" that wing tape? Dang!

At 00:52 03 February 2018, wrote:


I only recall two. One in Minden in the 1970s caused (IIRC) by not
locking the main pins so they ratcheted out and departed the fuselage
(pilot bailed out successfully). The other was a PIO at Fairfield in the
late 90s (?)

Chip, there was at least one more, and it was fatal. It was an
ASW-19 which was owned by Einar Enevoldson and a USAF test
pilot partner. Einar's partner was practicing high speed starts (so it
may not actually have been during a contest) when he got the
elevator into a flutter mode. IIRC, the stabilizer came off, and he
was killed. I think it happened in CA, and there were law suit issues
so that the USA Schleicher dealer would have had legal issues had he
set foot in CA afterwards. The time frame was early 1980's. After
that, an AD came out to cut two triangular slivers (max 1" wide) off
the elevator trailing edges.

RO

On Friday, February 2, 2018 at 5:44:56 PM UTC-8, Andy Blackburn wrote:
On Friday, February 2, 2018 at 9:54:53 AM UTC-8, wrote:

I don't have data on earlier accident and fatality rates but it would be great if someone smart who's inclined that way could analyze it (9B???).


Here's a link to some files summarizing Glider Fatal and Non-Fatal Accidents over a 20 year period between 1994 and 2013.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1sb...apIOscTfzuk5aY

For the fatal accidents I went to the trouble to read the accident reports as categorize the accident by phase of flight (TO, LDG and FLT - in-flight) as well as probable cause (my categories) as follows - with percent of accidents:

Stall/Spin - 39%
Flight Into Terrain - 17%
Loss of Control - 14%
Midair - 8%
Incapacitation - 7%
Assembly/Config - 7%
Structural - 7%

I also extracted Stall/Spin Accidents as the the most likely way to kill yourself thermalling low and highlighted the three that were during a contest.. (Trigger warning - not fun to read this stuff when you know the people). I can't see that any were thermalling low to avoid an outlanding, except perhaps the Ventus 2 crash at Lea County airport at Hobbs in 1997 where it was reported the pilot made a low approach though no mention of circling and one could easily imagine the attraction of wanting to land on a runway.

If someone wants to sort through the 551 non-fatal accidents - 131 are on approach and 151 are during landing. Please have at it. I'm sure the accident report will mention if it was at a contest and at the home airport or a landout. Since they most likely interviewed the pilot there will probably be enough to read to get a sense of things - though accuracy of reporting may be questionable.

Andy Blackburn
9B

"It would be interesting to see that analysis done over a wider group. To keep from doing too much work, I'd think that all pilots, on slow days (particularly when there were a high percentage landouts) would be enough. Faster days when everyone made it back are unlikely to have low saves, or if there were, the problem was more specific to the pilot than the contest."

I wonder who has more significant crashes, newbies or experience pilots. For what ever reason, as I sit here thinking, most of the serious to fatal crashes I can think of had been pilots with allot of experience.

I had heard that when you get to around 500 hours you need extra caution - it is enough to believe you have the skill but not enough to forget what got you there.

WH

Andy - thanks for the data. Backs up the trends we see everywhere, not just racing.

As non racer but a long time professional pilot and instructor I have found this entire thread very revealing about the sport of soaring. Like a "truth window".

No matter if it is power or gliders - the decline of new pilots and the overall health and status of GA is getting exponentially worse.

We are in a state of crisis and have to all work together to solve it. I don't know all the answers but we are trying to make headway where we can.

I do know that large egos, disregard of best safe practices, hubris, risk taking without cognizance, degradation of basic skills, poor decision making, not learning from the past, ignorance and selfishness are all working against us.

The world has changed, like it or not and we are down to the "adapt or perish" stage of our sport and GA as well.

Tom
Sugarbush Soaring

Bill, I thought it was 100hrs, but, whatever.
Yes, complacency and, "I can do that" possibly coupled with, "I got away with it before, surely I can do it yet another time....".

As I said before, rules can't fix stupid. Whether a one time bad decision for whatever reason, or a symptom of poor judgement (that hopefully others locally point out on the side.....), rules don't fix stupid.
Continued training does.
Calling out someone to the CD/CM at a contest, talking to high time pilots/CFIG's locally "may" change someone's thought patterns.
Maybe not.
You know me, you know the active CFIG's at your home field, if you feel there is an issue, go talk to them.

"rules can't fix stupid." we hear that over and over. But it is amazing that when there are points on the table, stupid seems to blossom like mushrooms after a rain. And then vanish the moment we go home and points are off the table. Rules can reward stupid. Or not.

John Cochrane

John, you agree or not?
I'm going from the "lottery" of picking start times before 9am to sorta current rules.
I won't say I haven't done sorta stupid stuff in the past, I will say stupid stuff "usually" won't win a US contest.
So.......right back at ya........

Not arguing one way or the other, just voicing my opinion.

Stupid stuff usually does not win contests. Our winners are tremendously talented pilots. Occasional sporting risks are part of the game. One landout, aborted flight through thunderstorm, etc. will lose a contest. So, usually, avoid such problems. But when you have to go, you have to go.

The hard deck case is not about winners doing dumb things while the rest of us sane people sit around and grumble. It's about the many risks that non-winners seem to take when the points clock is on, and do not take when the points clock is off.

It's an interesting contrast. Everywhere else in aviation we seem to have this concept. Minimums for an IFR approach, or you go around, are pretty hard and fast. I don't see vast complaining about this encroachment on the pilots' freedom or judgement.

The FAA's rule which is even a law against busting minimums, with penalties.. The hard deck proposes no such force or penalty. It would be as if airlines gave pilots a $1000 bonus for landing on time, no matter what the weather, and we are proposing, hey, why don't we take the bonus off the table when reported cloudbase is below 500 feet.

John Cochrane