How dangerous is soaring?

How many cars are on the roads you use to get to the gliderport?
How many gliders fly at at the gliderport?

jeplane wrote:
Not sure I agree with Ramy entirely...

How many traffic accidents have you seen through the years while
driving to the gliderport?

In that same time frame, how many gliders acidents have you seen at
that gliderport?

Richard
Phoenix, AZ

On Oct 30, 5:50 pm, Ramy wrote:
" No matter how safe you think you are, the risk is still
significantly higher than most normal activities (such as driving). "

You might want to think of adding a Ballistic Recover Chute to your glider
safety upgrades.

Mike Schumann

"Chip Bearden" wrote in message
ups.com...
Soaring is riskier than driving a car. Competition soaring and
aggressive cross-country soaring are riskier, still, although they are
typically practiced by more experienced pilots who should (key word)
know how to manage those risks. There's a good article about safety
and risk by former World Champion Bruno Gantenbrink on DG's Web site:
http://www.dg-flugzeugbau.de/index-e.html. If you fly cross-country or
competitively and haven't read it, please do.

I grew up mouthing the cliche (an international one, apparently, based
on Bruno's article) that the most dangerous part of soaring was the
drive to the airport. In fact, flying is the most dangerous part. In
40+ years of soaring, I've lost quite a few friends and acquaintances
to glider crashes, including my father and my best friend, both highly
experienced pilots. I've been first on the scene at fatal crashes. I
think about the potential downside consequences of soaring before
every contest and often when driving to the gliderport (although,
oddly, seldom when I'm flying). I've got two 13-year-old daughters who
would be devasted if something happened to me while flying.

Yet I continue to fly. Soaring is the most fulfilling, exciting,
rewarding activity I participate in, and I feel more alive for it.
Nothing matches the exhilaration of completing a task or an ambitious
flight knowing I've flown well. And I'm honest enough to admit that if
soaring were completely risk free, it wouldn't have the same appeal. I
suspect more than a few of my fellow pilots share this "condition"
although I would describe none of them as thrill seekers or dare
devils.

Yet I do everything I can to minimize the risks balanced against my
desire to compete and fly cross country. I bought my current glider
because it had a safety cockpit and impact-absorbing landing gear. I
equipped it with a canopy wire deflector bar, an ELT, a 6-point safety
harness, a rear-view mirror, and more than a gallon of easily
accessible drinking water. All this was to keep me out of trouble and
to help me survive trouble if it occurs. I'm considering installing a
transponder or a portable collision avoidance device to reduce what I
think is my biggest risk currently--being hit by a power plane in the
busy airspace where I fly west of New York City. I'm probably more
cautious than some. I know my limits and don't knowingly exceed them.

Soaring isn't for everyone. One pilot I know, a good one, dropped out
of soaring after his wife got sick and died. As much as he loved
soaring, his children were young and he didn't feel it was fair to
them to continue something that increased the risk they might end up
losing both parents. He intends to get back in the game when they're
older. I think he made the right call for him.

I confess that when I was in my 20s, I not only mouthed the cliche
about driving being more dangerous than flying, but I glorified the
risks that even then I acknowledged existed in order to enhance the
sense that I was doing something special, something extreme, something
most people would never experience. Now in my 50s, I see that part of
the appeal of soaring is the ability to push myself up against the
edge of the cliff, look over it, and then back away. I don't need or
want the risk that a power pilot flying head down and locked will plow
into me from behind (as nearly happened a few months ago) or the risk
that someone above me in the gaggle will make a mistake and spin down
through my altitude (as happened a few years ago). The challenge is to
work with the risks I can control. It's the ones I can't control--and
I'd be in denial if I said they didn't exist--that trouble me. There
are enough of those, plus the risk that I will make a bad mistake
someday (I'm not in denial about that, either), to remind me that
soaring is inherently risky compared with most of the other things I
do. To date, those risks are not sufficient to cause me to quit
soaring. But we're all different and what works for me may not apply
to anyone else.

Chip Bearden
ASW 24 "JB"
USA




--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

On Oct 30, 6:50 pm, Ramy wrote:
" No matter how safe you think you are, the risk is still
significantly higher than most normal activities (such as driving)"

You sure?

How many times have you seen a traffic accident on your way to the
gliderport?

In the same time frame, how many glider accidents have you seen in
that same airport?

Although I can appreciate what Patrick is going through, stopping from
flying ARE NOT going to stop accidents from happening. And I doubt the
deads would have want us to stop anyway...

On Oct 31, 2:11 pm, Marc Ramsey wrote:
How many cars are on the roads you use to get to the gliderport?
How many gliders fly at at the gliderport?

So you are telling me driving is safer than flying? Not sure if I
would drive or fly with you!...:-)

Every so often a thread like this gets started on the
UK ras. Normally it's a reporter looking for a story
to sensationalise. We mostly ignore it and don't give
them any ammo

wrote:
I can't understand your rudeness 'R'. I believe you haven't been on a
same situaiton than I am. I have flown almost everywhere and I have
flown numerous competitions plus I have been instructing since 1992.
So I believe I am qualified to fly glider just fine and write about
it.

I am not sure if you guys understood my consern.What happened to those
extremely skillfull pilots ie Geoff Loyns? can the same thing happen
to my other friends or myself. Is it worth trying the thin ice
anymore?

That who said that soaring is not dangerous is wrong. You can get
killed without your own reason. You can just thermal on a 10 footer
and some one who is joining the lift, hits you from behind. Maybe he
didn't see you at all. That has happened numerous times. Luckily most
of them has survived, few didn't.


The only reliable way we have to determine how dangerous is soaring is
to look at the statistics, and at the qualifications required of and
supplied by the people whose flights make up those statistics.

We know something about many of the rare failures to have a safe flight,
and little or nothing about the thousands of safely executed flights,
and one could be expected to have understood that quite well before the
question was asked. Therefor we can only conclude that the questioner
does not really expect to get a solid answer.

Does he want reassurance? He has it from those who have said in effect,
"Go out and fly as safely as you know how, and you will be very safe."

Does he want a reason to seek a more mundane pastime? He has it from
those who have listed the many threats, expounded upon the uncertainty
of life in general, and wondered at the occasional loss of a highly
experienced and proficient pilot.

The greater curiosity is why those brave and hard-working tow pilots do
what they do. The dangers are at least as great, and the satisfactions
far less obvious.


Jack

[apologies if this is a double-post - the first one didn't seem to go
through]

On Oct 31, 4:04 pm, jeplane wrote:
On Oct 30, 6:50 pm, Ramy wrote:
" No matter how safe you think you are, the risk is still
significantly higher than most normal activities (such as driving)"

You sure?

How many times have you seen a traffic accident on your way to the
gliderport?...

That question reflects a very typical, but not very productive
approach to the issue at hand. The plural of "anecdote" is not "data."

Data such as that in this PDF is why I personally feel fairly certain
when I say that flying gliders is considerably riskier than most of
what you'd call "normal activities":

http://www.ntsb.gov/publictn/2007/ARG0701.pdf

See page 15, which shows (for year 2003) bar graphs for both the raw
total and fatal accident numbers per general aviation sector, and the
total and fatal accidents per hours flown for each sector.

Observe that the numbers for gliders are 19.45 accidents per 100,000
hours flown, with 5.07 fatal accidents per 100,000 hours. That's
second only to amateur-built aircraft, with 21.6 and 5.5 respectively.

Contrast that with the numbers for single-engine piston-powered
airplanes with 7.91 accidents and 1.41 fatal accidents per 100,000
hours. In 2003 at least, gliders had 245% more accidents and 360% more
fatal accidents per hour than the puddle-jumpers that comprise the
majority of the US general aviation fleet.

There's no breakdown for poor saps like me who combine the two worst
categories by dabbling in amateur-built gliders, but my bet is that
the numbers would be somewhere between the two.

As concerns comparisons between the accident rates of flying and
driving, I defer to this analysis by Harry Mantakos:

http://www.meretrix.com/~harry/flyin...vsdriving.html

Given those numbers, I normally feel fairly confident when I say that
soaring is much more dangerous than driving, and is perhaps comparable
to riding a motorcycle. But I do tend to get odd looks when I go on to
say that I gave up riding on the street and took up Formula IV
roadracing (125cc anything-goes full-fairing 2-stroke bikes with top
speed of about 100 mph) because I thought it was safer as well as more
fun.

Bottom line: I don't recommend flying or soaring to just everybody.
Based on what I know about their methods, means, and risk aversion,
for some folks I recommend knitting or photography.

Thanks, Bob K.

On Oct 31, 4:04 pm, jeplane wrote:
On Oct 30, 6:50 pm, Ramy wrote:
" No matter how safe you think you are, the risk is still
significantly higher than most normal activities (such as driving)"

You sure?

How many times have you seen a traffic accident on your way to the
gliderport?

In the same time frame, how many glider accidents have you seen in
that same airport?

Although I can appreciate what Patrick is going through, stopping from
flying ARE NOT going to stop accidents from happening. And I doubt the
deads would have want us to stop anyway...

Yes, I am sure and I think Marc explained it very well. No need to be
a rocket scientist to do the math. Couple of posters on this thread
clearly don't understand basic statistics. And yes, stopping from
flying WILL stop flying accident to happen to those who stops flying.
But I agree with you with one thing, the deads would not want us to
stop flying. But I am also sympathise with those who got traumatized
witnessing accidents and losing friends.
And don't get me wrong, I am not advocating stopping flying, in the
contrary, I will be the last one to stop, but at least I do not live
in denial as some others, am very well aware that there is a big risk
and I have only partial control of the risk as I am human and all
human are prone to mistakes, and I am willing to take the risk since
it worth it for me. As my new bumper sticker says "I live to fly and I
fly to live" and hopefully I'll be able to do it for years to come.

Ramy

jeplane wrote:
On Oct 31, 2:11 pm, Marc Ramsey wrote:
How many cars are on the roads you use to get to the gliderport?
How many gliders fly at at the gliderport?

So you are telling me driving is safer than flying? Not sure if I
would drive or fly with you!...:-)

I think most of us that have been in the sport for 20 or 30 years have
known more people that were killed in glider accidents than car
accidents. If you limit it to glider pilots killed in cars versus in
gliders, it makes glider flying look even more dangerous.

As a group, we manage to drive cars much more safely than we fly our
gliders, in good part because (as already mentioned elsewhere) glider
flying is much less forgiving.

--
Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA
* Change "netto" to "net" to email me directly
* "Transponders in Sailplanes" http://tinyurl.com/y739x4
* "A Guide to Self-launching Sailplane Operation" at www.motorglider.org

On Oct 31, 12:51 pm, jeplane wrote:
Not sure I agree with Ramy entirely...

How many traffic accidents have you seen through the years while
driving to the gliderport?

In that same time frame, how many gliders acidents have you seen at
that gliderport?

Richard
Phoenix, AZ

On Oct 30, 5:50 pm, Ramy wrote:
" No matter how safe you think you are, the risk is still
significantly higher than most normal activities (such as driving). "

Not as many road accidents as I have seen at the gliderport!!

Lets face it guys Gliding is Dangerous.
Very Dangerous if you start to push the envelope of your experience
and comfort level.

I have lost over the years more than 10 friends or acquaintances.
When I raced sailboats or windsurfed I never lost any!

This summer was a real bad one for me loosing a very close flying
buddy Geoff Loyns, then Steve Fossett goes missing and now Stew.
All I knew through soaring, hanging at the airport or conversing on
here and emails.

I love soaring and think it has given me some of the best memories of
my life.
But as I look at my young son I am drawn between the selfish urge to
mental floss with soaring and the reality of life.
Running a Start up company with employees that rely on my breathing
and working is another factor.

I will probably keep flying but in a different way than I used to.
My flying will be less risky and not as aggressive as previous years.
I want to also explore other sides of soaring that I have not
experienced as much, such as enjoying the moment more than chasing
after distance/speed.

Don't get me wrong Soaring is an amazing sport but you have to realize
it is dangerous.
It is the only sport I know where if you screw up you will probably
die!!
That is a sobering thought for sure.
Any one who tells you otherwise either is on crack or has not been
around the sport for a long time.
Just hang around the glider port long enough and you WILL loose flying
friends.

It is a fact most people die in bed smelling of urine and lysol,
So the trade off here is gliding or pressing the button above your bed
screaming for the nurse to change your bed pan!!

On that note I will stop waffling..

Regards

Al