Hard Deck

I don't know whether I understand John's proposal better or if he's modifying it in the process of these online negotiations.

I re-read his "Contest Safety" presentation again, which I had downloaded earlier. I also visited his Web site and read his contest safety reports to the Rules Committee for 2011, 2012, and 2013 for the first time. If you haven't, you really should: https://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/joh...ring/index.htm

My impression was that he has been calling for a series of SUA files to implement a hard deck over most of a contest envelope. I think that is a hopelessly complex technical solution that, like GPS and FLARM, might actually have some negative unintended consequences because it would focus our attention more inside the cockpit than it already is, would complicate decision making when low thereby ironically increasing stress at a bad time, and could encourage pilots to thermal at the edges of the SUA motivated by the points penalty if they didn't and lulled into a possible false sense of security so long as they were above the hard deck.

But after reading all four truly sobering documents (that reflect an impressive amount of work), I understand John's frustration. Most contest accidents are avoidable, and not simply by choosing not to fly contests. I still don't agree that wholesale SUAs to create a layer of hard decks over most of a contest arena is the right solution. But I would hate to see us ignore the potential for discouraging ill-advised behavior at specific, known, high-risk locations by implementing altitude minimums selectively. And that's how I read what he is proposing now.

That also seems to have been where he began (from his 2011 report): "We should allow and encourage contest organizers to set up minimum altitudes over wellâ€�known trouble spots, passes, or tempting unlandable terrain. These would be included in the SUA file, and falling below the minimum altitude triggers a substantial penalty.Â*Both crashes at Logan involved skimming over passes quite low (or trying to), and previous crashes at Mifflin have involved the same issue.Â*Â*Specific wellâ€�traveled and tricky passes are good places for a minimum altitude."

It's interesting that some have proposed a steering turn to take Sergio's Elevator off the table. If it's OK to discourage the use of that strategy via a steering turnpoint, why is it not OK to implement the same thing with a very narrowly defined SUA file? I haven't flown it but it sounds like the backside ridge south of New Castle: i.e., stay above the ridgetop in case you have to bail out and everything is fine. Dropping below ridgetop is another thing entirely.

Another candidate could be prohibiting thermaling below 500' over the home airport. We've all watched pilots struggle at 200' or 300' trying to avoid a relight but mostly causing anxiety and traffic congestion.

We just have to be cautious. For one reason, John raised a great question in the speaker notes of his 2002 PPT): "Interesting that so much of this [spate of accidents] is in the 90s. Is the great precision of GPS leading to smaller margins?"

Yes. I know so. That's not the same as saying that smaller margins have led to more accidents. But I suspect there's a correlation. Likewise FLARM--which I believe should be mandatory in contests--has had the inevitable effect of lulling some pilots into not paying as much attention to other aircraft, relying on the technology to take care of collision warnings.

So I worry about the potential to create new problems with a broad, rather than very selective, imposition of SUAs.

Another reason for caution is that this might unfairly impact the top and/or local pilots who can use their experience and knowledge to do things the rest of us can't (or think we can't, or can't do safely). Rewarding a pilot for taking an unwise risk seems wrong. But rewarding a pilot for superior skill is what it's all about.

Yes, this could be the first step down a slippery slope to flying contests in the equivalent of an aerobatic "box" with artificially imposed vertical and lateral limits that would drastically curtail the type of flying we enjoy today. Some (including yours truly) might argue we're already on that slope with the finish cylinder (oh, well....).

But reading about some of the incidents in John's reports is depressing. And thought provoking. And now I can understand his frustration better.

Just a thought to keep the discussion going!

Chip Bearden

I see a number of issues he

1) Lets define a typical contest area as a circle with a radius of 75 miles from the contest site. Lets assume this is Elmira. In this area the valley floors likely vary +/- 300ft and often that much within 10 miles of each other. Creating an SUA file to account for this would be nearly impossible.

2) This is one more thing that will cause people to be staring in the cockpit instead of outside. Spending time looking at computers WILL lead to not spending time looking at potential landing sites. This WILL lead to accidents that would otherwise not occur. The question is will the hard deck prevent more accidents than it will cause. This is a question that would likely take 10 years of data to analyze. In the meantime the rule may cause more deaths than it prevents.

3) The rule will penalize perfectly safe flying. I remember a 60 mile glide in dead air coming back to Mifflin while in the back seat of KS. Detoured to Jacks a few miles west of the airport and arrived about half way up the ridge (250ft+/-). Minimum sink speed and on top of the ridge in 30 seconds, home for the day win. If the SUA had a 300ft hard deck in the valley we would have crossed under it on the way to the ridge save. Result - landout.

I really enjoy your frequent op-eds in the WSJ and elsewhere - especially when you discuss the fact that you can't regulate against stupidity. Perhaps thats the best path to take with soaring as well...

On Friday, January 26, 2018 at 5:01:01 PM UTC-5, John Cochrane wrote:
Thanks, it was time to start a proper threat. Let me put out a concrete proposal so we know what we're talking about.

The purpose of the hard deck is not to prevent bad behavior. The purpose is to remove the points incentive for very low thermaling, which has led to many crashes. It is not intended to alleviate all points incentives for all bad behavior -- such as flying too close to rocks, flying over unlandable terrain, and so forth. It is a small step, not a cure all.

Proposal. The contest organizers prepare a set of sua (special use airspace) files, just like those used to define restricted areas, class B and C, and other forbidden airspace. The SUAs denote a minimum MSL altitude for that area. The MSL altitudes should be round numbers, such as 500 foot increments. They should be roughly 500 - 1500 feet AGL, with higher values over unlandable terrain. The SUAs are designed for altitudes above valley floors, where handouts take place. In normal circumstances there is no hard deck over mountains and ridges. Specified ridge routes, where ridge soaring less than 500 feet over the valley floor, are carved out. The SUA stops short of the ridge in such areas.

These SUAs are forbidden airspace like any other. The penalty is that you are landed out at the point of entry.

Long disclaimers about pilot responsibility. The SUA may be at too low an altitude for safety. Below the SUA you are not forced to land out -- do what you want, thermal up, get home if you can. We're just not going to give contest points for anything you do after you get in the SUA.

Try it first on relatively flat sites. The SUAs may need to be more complex for mountain and ridge sites, so obviously we move there after the concept is proved at flatland sites.

Again, we're not here to forbid anything or tell pilots what to do. We just are no longer going to give points for very low altitude saves. We may not even dent the accident rate. We just want to remove it as a competitive necessity and temptation.

John Cochrane

The issues are quite site dependent. Out in the west, there aren't many instances of circling at 300 ft AGL that I have seen, the issue is more typically getting down to 3000 ft AGL where there are only crashing sites within glide range. Usually the perpetrator finds lift and makes it out, and often this is a competitive advantage. Occasionally they don't find lift, land or crash at an inaccessible location.

As I understand it back east, the whole contest is run at less than 3000 AGL and often far less. In addition, the issues out west are less having to cross an SUA to get to the other side, and more typically having to stop and take a 2 knot thermal rather than pushing on, low, hoping for a 10 knot thermal. Even though mountainous, I would not envision a bunch of inverted cake steps. A simple readout of vertical clearance to the SUA you are over is sufficient and behaves exactly as your altimeter, requiring no more attention. I'm getting close to the SUA ('ground') and I'd better stop for the next thermal. You really only need to know the top of the SUA, once, for that valley - it doesn't change. You look once, see that the floor is 8000 ft, and take thermals when you get down to 8500 or so. There isn't any need to stare at instruments. The edges are rarely a concern, because they typically end at the rising terrain surrounding it, you can't drop over the edge without penetrating rock.

I'm not sure if that is really John's proposal, but that's how I had envisioned it.

On Sunday, January 28, 2018 at 1:53:30 PM UTC-5, jfitch wrote:
The issues are quite site dependent.

Exactly. Like Chip, I went back and looked at the BB Contest Safety Reports. If you leave aside mountain and ridge sites (technical sites), it's hard to find any crashes which would have been prevented by some sort of hard-deck. Two of the examples (Fairfield and Perry) happened near the home airport, ostensibly due to pilots trying to squeak home. We already have a rule for that (minimum arrival height). The Diana crash at Fairfield should have been a successful outlanding since the pilot did some things right (i.e. committed to a landout) but inexplicably messed up by switching fields late.

The Pegasus crash at Elmira wasn't a guy trying to extract maximum points on the day. As the report makes clear, he had already given up racing and was just trying to avoid landing out. He botched what should have been a simple field landing. Similarly, the Mifflin crash in the Stone Valley looks to have resulted from a failed ridge run, perhaps due to inexperience with ridge flying.

Now, let's consider unintended consequences in a flatlands site. Here's a very realistic scenario. Windy day. 10 mile marginal stretch with good fields on the other side (maybe even an airport). Pilot leaves with a cushion but gets slammed. 2 miles from the safer terrain and cruising at 80kts he's down to 300 feet above the "hard deck" (say 1000 feet). He's got a reasonable/safe glide to the fields, but points are on the line. He will almost certainly drop down under 1000 feet before he gets to salvation. Then, he hits a broken half knot. At least he's not going down. What does he do? The safe thing is to bounce it and proceed knowing he's almost certainly going to "virtually" land out. But points are on the line. So he stops and tries to make the half knot rotor/thermal work, only to drift back another mile while bleeding off the speed he had in the tank. After flailing around gaining on a half turn and losing on the other half, he loses the half knot entirely, but now he's got a much more marginal glide to the safe fields. In fact, he's not sure he can make it. Well that sucks.

Regarding mountain and ridge sites, can you really anticipate all of the permutations in conditions to make a one-size-fits-all hard deck? Leave aside the high ground; even the valleys have significant risks with one set of conditions and can be completely benign in others.

I don't believe that we can afford to do nothing, but I don't agree this is the solution. Couple of thoughts:

- Reading the Nadler report about the Sugarbush debacle vs. Cindy B's observations, it's clear that pilot qualifications/experience ought to be studied more carefully. CDs and CMs ought to be comfortable challenging pilots who appear to be in over their heads.

- Encourage pilot classification (e.g. Gold vs. Silver) classification rather than always grouping by glider classification at highly technical sites.. Then, ensure CDs call tasks accordingly, inlcluding being willing to cancel days (such as the rain/ridge/wave day in the Sugarbush report) for the less-experience classification.

- Encourage more sites to improve the task area briefings with more focus on never-go areas or minimum safe altitudes under specific conditions.

P3

This thread is very thought provoking. I wish to declare a principal: I am
against excessive rule making.

I am of the opinion that it is down to the director to look for and
intervene when he / she sees unsafe behaviour and then have the authority,
and balls, to sanction or disqualify the pilots that take disproportionate
risk.

Jim

Are we not trying to overcomplicate things again with this sua-file?

With this file do we remove the responsibility to fly safe from the pilot to the CD. It is the pilot who decides what is safe and what is not, anykind of rules should not take over this responibility. But it should remove the gain of stupidity. And what will happens if the CD makes the sua-file wrong. Who to blame, the pilot or the CD?

An easier solution would be to stop counting distance points from 300m(~100feet) AGL of your outlanding. If you landout do you get max distance of the logg where you are at least 300m above the landing. The hard deck can be defined i local procedures according to actuall terrain as in Big forrest areas should the level be increase compared to the flatland with large agricultures.


This would not take out the thrill of an low save, but it will stop you from making studid glides on low level to gain thoose valuble extra points as each km gives you. Thoose glides are a real problem, current rules promotes stupidity to glide as far as possible when the outlanding is unaviodable. Each extra km can be 4 points, 10km can be 40points and that can be the difference to be on the podium or not at a WGC. So how are you gonna spend your last 300m, make a pattern and loose the medal or continue and win the game?

With rules that stops giving you distance points does not remove the pilots resposibility but it take away the gain on doing something stupid.

/Per Carlin

On Sunday, January 28, 2018 at 2:15:07 PM UTC-7, Jim White wrote:
This thread is very thought provoking. I wish to declare a principal: I am
against excessive rule making.

I am of the opinion that it is down to the director to look for and
intervene when he / she sees unsafe behaviour and then have the authority,
and balls, to sanction or disqualify the pilots that take disproportionate
risk.

Jim

Precisely. I have a proposal that I think addresses BB's issue without any new rules. Here's how...

We already have the rules that we need:

10.9.1.4 Pilots must pay particular attention to safety during the process of finishing, landing, and rolling to a stop. A pilot whose
finish, pattern, landing, or rollout is deemed unsafe by the CD is subject to a penalty for unsafe operation (¶ 12.2.5.1).

12.2.5.1 Unsafe operation (including all phases of flight and ground operation) (¶ 10.9.1.4, ¶ 10.9.3.4): maximum penalty = disqualification.

In the rules guide or by declaration of the contest CD, it shall be overtly recognized that thermalling in the flats (wherever there isn't a lower escape) at or below 300 feet is defined to be unsafe.

It will be recognized that an assessment of low thermalling can be made if and only if the glider lands within 30 minutes of the time of the infraction such that the flight recorder will have a presumed to be valid pressure reference. The proposed penalty may be 200 points for a first infraction, for example; and perhaps zero for the day on a second infraction.

In practice, when the scorer has time to address the matter, he will examine the flight logs of pilots who have landed out to determine whether any low thermalling had occured within the 30 minutes prior interval. If he finds such, he brings the data to the attention of the CD. The CD makes a penalty assessment taking into consideration the data presented and any other relevant factors.

This would create a strong motivation in the cockpit to not take a chance of losing a lot of points on a low save attempt that probably won't work anyway. We all know that recovery attempts at a very low altitude are quite unlikely to succeed. The cockpit calculus changes in exactly the way that BB (and most all us) desires to reduce the occurence of spin-in accidents.

With this, we avoid a lot of new rules and complication. Our flying liberty is not grossly impacted. With a 300 foot standard, most pilots would be motivated to break off at around 500 or 600 feet because they would not be able to precisely judge where the 300 foot AGL point would be and are motivated to not take a chance on the points loss.

All of my numbers here are just for example. My numbers might be refined by more careful consideration or even adjusted at the discretion of the CD for different sites.

On Sunday, January 28, 2018 at 1:39:31 PM UTC-8, Per Carlin wrote:
Are we not trying to overcomplicate things again with this sua-file?

With this file do we remove the responsibility to fly safe from the pilot to the CD. It is the pilot who decides what is safe and what is not, anykind of rules should not take over this responibility. But it should remove the gain of stupidity. And what will happens if the CD makes the sua-file wrong. Who to blame, the pilot or the CD?

An easier solution would be to stop counting distance points from 300m(~100feet) AGL of your outlanding. If you landout do you get max distance of the logg where you are at least 300m above the landing. The hard deck can be defined i local procedures according to actuall terrain as in Big forrest areas should the level be increase compared to the flatland with large agricultures.


This would not take out the thrill of an low save, but it will stop you from making studid glides on low level to gain thoose valuble extra points as each km gives you. Thoose glides are a real problem, current rules promotes stupidity to glide as far as possible when the outlanding is unaviodable.. Each extra km can be 4 points, 10km can be 40points and that can be the difference to be on the podium or not at a WGC. So how are you gonna spend your last 300m, make a pattern and loose the medal or continue and win the game?

With rules that stops giving you distance points does not remove the pilots resposibility but it take away the gain on doing something stupid.

/Per Carlin

Isn't that just a hard deck set at 300m AGL? Doesn't it have all the same critics as the SUA file version? You still can't see it, it still eliminates the 200' ridge crossings. You are still going to circle in P3's half knotter if you see yourself falling below it.

We have at least on instance of the SUA version, the Reno Class C. It's an irregular (but well known) shape, and large. It is overflown frequently in contests, and has been that way for about 20 years. There've been people DSQ'd for dropping into it. I've not heard any complaints or problems with it..

On Sunday, January 28, 2018 at 2:30:46 PM UTC-8, Steve Koerner wrote:
On Sunday, January 28, 2018 at 2:15:07 PM UTC-7, Jim White wrote:
This thread is very thought provoking. I wish to declare a principal: I am
against excessive rule making.

I am of the opinion that it is down to the director to look for and
intervene when he / she sees unsafe behaviour and then have the authority,
and balls, to sanction or disqualify the pilots that take disproportionate
risk.

Jim

Precisely. I have a proposal that I think addresses BB's issue without any new rules. Here's how...

We already have the rules that we need:

10.9.1.4 Pilots must pay particular attention to safety during the process of finishing, landing, and rolling to a stop. A pilot whose
finish, pattern, landing, or rollout is deemed unsafe by the CD is subject to a penalty for unsafe operation (¶ 12.2.5.1).

12.2.5.1 Unsafe operation (including all phases of flight and ground operation) (¶ 10.9.1.4, ¶ 10.9.3.4): maximum penalty = disqualification.

In the rules guide or by declaration of the contest CD, it shall be overtly recognized that thermalling in the flats (wherever there isn't a lower escape) at or below 300 feet is defined to be unsafe.

It will be recognized that an assessment of low thermalling can be made if and only if the glider lands within 30 minutes of the time of the infraction such that the flight recorder will have a presumed to be valid pressure reference. The proposed penalty may be 200 points for a first infraction, for example; and perhaps zero for the day on a second infraction.

In practice, when the scorer has time to address the matter, he will examine the flight logs of pilots who have landed out to determine whether any low thermalling had occured within the 30 minutes prior interval. If he finds such, he brings the data to the attention of the CD. The CD makes a penalty assessment taking into consideration the data presented and any other relevant factors.

This would create a strong motivation in the cockpit to not take a chance of losing a lot of points on a low save attempt that probably won't work anyway. We all know that recovery attempts at a very low altitude are quite unlikely to succeed. The cockpit calculus changes in exactly the way that BB (and most all us) desires to reduce the occurence of spin-in accidents..

With this, we avoid a lot of new rules and complication. Our flying liberty is not grossly impacted. With a 300 foot standard, most pilots would be motivated to break off at around 500 or 600 feet because they would not be able to precisely judge where the 300 foot AGL point would be and are motivated to not take a chance on the points loss.

All of my numbers here are just for example. My numbers might be refined by more careful consideration or even adjusted at the discretion of the CD for different sites.

Steve, I don't think that addresses John's issue, and certainly not mine. Once a guy has landed out, he's taken a big points hit. This would reward even lower circling, hoping that you would get away and not be subject to scrutiny and a penalty. If you make the save at 200', you've saved the day and your contest position and are not subject to your proposed penalty. The more prudent pilot that stopped at 800' and landed, did neither and is punished for it.

If the CD already has authority here, then could this be a process to use it?

It counts as landing to fly anywhere at less than X feet AGL without having enough speed to pull up to X feet and be above Y airspeed. (X = 500 feet, Y=60Knots, with a simple chart for the pullup?) The goal being to limit low thermaling and low and slow passes across ridges but still allow flight near terrain.

When you publish the IGC, you also have to publish your landing plan for the whole flight. (For each part of the flight, the area you planned to land and how you were going to get there with energy you had (as opposed to hoped to get) when you committed to that option.) Any pilot can ask for clarification on this and the CD can then access penalties.

In addition, experiment with an occasional safety SUA for specific issues.