Hard Deck

The horse is dead on this topic (I think) - but I will say I was got a different interpretation...........

"but many among those consider taking occasional, considerable risks up to an including imminent chance of death part of soaring competition,"

I did not get that at all. There were people who did not like over regulation and other that were willing to accept more regulation, but wanted evidence.

No where did I get the feeling any comp pilots wanted to chance imminent death.

But the best/most civil RAS discussion I have read to date may the "Hard Deck" Rest in Peace

WH

On Tuesday, February 6, 2018 at 5:07:22 PM UTC-5, John Cochrane wrote:
John's academic work is all about how poorly crafted regulations give bad incentives. Regulation isn't about "more" or "less" it's about "smart" vs. "dumb", the latter often giving bad incentives.
John

John can't answer the well posed questions from others on whether his soaring regulations will be "smart" or "dumb" in practice. After some experience John will decide what is "smart" and "dumb" and then propose "more" and "better" regulations. Soon John will be the only one who understands the differential equations and SPSS runs required to interpret the "more" and "better" regulations. John will help the highest bidder of ClearNav or LX Nav program their CN3000 or LX 1,000,000. John will get rich. Hmm... this sounds like the kind of money the ACA "interpreters" are making that John so despises.

Looks to me like a grasp at a rule intended to slow down the fast guys, in the name of safety. For their children. So noble. Enthusiasm waned when it was shown the same guys would still win.
On Tuesday, February 6, 2018 at 10:49:28 PM UTC-5, Kevin Christner wrote:
On Tuesday, February 6, 2018 at 5:07:22 PM UTC-5, John Cochrane wrote:
John's academic work is all about how poorly crafted regulations give bad incentives. Regulation isn't about "more" or "less" it's about "smart" vs. "dumb", the latter often giving bad incentives.
John

John can't answer the well posed questions from others on whether his soaring regulations will be "smart" or "dumb" in practice. After some experience John will decide what is "smart" and "dumb" and then propose "more" and "better" regulations. Soon John will be the only one who understands the differential equations and SPSS runs required to interpret the "more" and "better" regulations. John will help the highest bidder of ClearNav or LX Nav program their CN3000 or LX 1,000,000. John will get rich. Hmm... this sounds like the kind of money the ACA "interpreters" are making that John so despises.

On Tuesday, February 6, 2018 at 5:07:27 PM UTC-5, jfitch wrote:
On Tuesday, February 6, 2018 at 10:15:10 AM UTC-8, Tango Eight wrote:
On Tuesday, February 6, 2018 at 10:55:32 AM UTC-5, John Cochrane wrote:
T8: Part of what's being tested every time we go XC soaring (never mind competition) is the ability to assess and manage risk. I relish this. If you take this out of the game... well, it's no longer the same game.


Are you f...ing kidding? You voluntarily enjoy the ability to assess and manage physical risk.. and by definition to occasionally fail with potentially fatal results? What is this, aviation or climbing Mt. Everest?

Anyway, fear not dear T8. Even with a hard deck, you will still be flying a motorless aircraft, and there will be plenty of opportunity for you to scare yourself silly even though you no longer will get contest points for it. We'll even still give you points for flying in clouds, through thunderstorms, over unlandable terrain, shoot mountain passes with 10 feet to spare, and so forth. And the risk of losing points at 500 or 1000 feet might still be enough to keep you awake, though the hard ground won't give you quite the rush it used to.

I mean, really, of all the illogic on this thread, the idea that no longer giving contest points for what a pilot chooses to do under 500 or 1000 feet AGL, removes all risk from motorless aviation, so the pilot no longer has to "assess and manage risk" is the most ludicrous. You might as well argue that we remove parachutes, so pilots get more of the adrenaline rush of assessing and managing risks.

Oppose a hard deck if you will, but please bring some faint common sense, thought and logic to the discussion

John Cochrane

No, I'm not kidding. However I have (unintentionally) exposed your rather considerable confirmation bias.

I was responding to Jon's earlier stated idea to create a hard deck thousands of feet in the air.

What I relish is the fact that it's all on me as PIC. I have to be disciplined enough to know when to say "screw this, I'm landing", or "screw this, I'm at Tatum bound for Portales, it's blue, there's cirrus, I'm unfamiliar with the terrain, it looks like the moon, I'm out of my element, I'm fatigued, I'm going to stay with the clouds and wait" (day 1, 2013 15s). I relish the fact that I know I am bigger & stronger than my own ego. That day my score sucked but the glider was safely in the box, still shiny. My tie down neighbor's... not so much.

Back to the 500' thing: at 500' over a landable field, I'm landing. Duh. What the **** is going to happen in the 120 seconds between 500' and 250' that didn't happen in the last half hour? With about 99% probability... nothing at all.

ND: The smart thing to do if the nannies do have their way is leave all that airspace out of your nav equipment and just fly your best game. You tag the airspace, well sucks to be you.

I don't think we need the rule, I will oppose it if asked. My prediction is: if such a rule were adopted, it won't be 500' for very darned long.

Evan Ludeman / T8

Well, this discussion has been quite the education for me. Now this thread is only a sampling of about 10 pilots, but many among those consider taking occasional, considerable risks up to an including imminent chance of death part of soaring competition, because it has always been that way and they like it. I personally know a few pilots with similar attitudes towards the sport, but it is a small minority among the pilot community that I fly with.

No. You are an idiot, sir.

Evan Ludeman

On Tuesday, February 6, 2018 at 5:07:27 PM UTC-5, jfitch wrote:
On Tuesday, February 6, 2018 at 10:15:10 AM UTC-8, Tango Eight wrote:
On Tuesday, February 6, 2018 at 10:55:32 AM UTC-5, John Cochrane wrote:
T8: Part of what's being tested every time we go XC soaring (never mind competition) is the ability to assess and manage risk. I relish this. If you take this out of the game... well, it's no longer the same game.


Are you f...ing kidding? You voluntarily enjoy the ability to assess and manage physical risk.. and by definition to occasionally fail with potentially fatal results? What is this, aviation or climbing Mt. Everest?

Anyway, fear not dear T8. Even with a hard deck, you will still be flying a motorless aircraft, and there will be plenty of opportunity for you to scare yourself silly even though you no longer will get contest points for it. We'll even still give you points for flying in clouds, through thunderstorms, over unlandable terrain, shoot mountain passes with 10 feet to spare, and so forth. And the risk of losing points at 500 or 1000 feet might still be enough to keep you awake, though the hard ground won't give you quite the rush it used to.

I mean, really, of all the illogic on this thread, the idea that no longer giving contest points for what a pilot chooses to do under 500 or 1000 feet AGL, removes all risk from motorless aviation, so the pilot no longer has to "assess and manage risk" is the most ludicrous. You might as well argue that we remove parachutes, so pilots get more of the adrenaline rush of assessing and managing risks.

Oppose a hard deck if you will, but please bring some faint common sense, thought and logic to the discussion

John Cochrane

No, I'm not kidding. However I have (unintentionally) exposed your rather considerable confirmation bias.

I was responding to Jon's earlier stated idea to create a hard deck thousands of feet in the air.

What I relish is the fact that it's all on me as PIC. I have to be disciplined enough to know when to say "screw this, I'm landing", or "screw this, I'm at Tatum bound for Portales, it's blue, there's cirrus, I'm unfamiliar with the terrain, it looks like the moon, I'm out of my element, I'm fatigued, I'm going to stay with the clouds and wait" (day 1, 2013 15s). I relish the fact that I know I am bigger & stronger than my own ego. That day my score sucked but the glider was safely in the box, still shiny. My tie down neighbor's... not so much.

Back to the 500' thing: at 500' over a landable field, I'm landing. Duh. What the **** is going to happen in the 120 seconds between 500' and 250' that didn't happen in the last half hour? With about 99% probability... nothing at all.

ND: The smart thing to do if the nannies do have their way is leave all that airspace out of your nav equipment and just fly your best game. You tag the airspace, well sucks to be you.

I don't think we need the rule, I will oppose it if asked. My prediction is: if such a rule were adopted, it won't be 500' for very darned long.

Evan Ludeman / T8

Well, this discussion has been quite the education for me. Now this thread is only a sampling of about 10 pilots, but many among those consider taking occasional, considerable risks up to an including imminent chance of death part of soaring competition, because it has always been that way and they like it. I personally know a few pilots with similar attitudes towards the sport, but it is a small minority among the pilot community that I fly with.

An interesting side line to the discussion is the notion that safety is a binary quantity: you either are, or are not safe in a certain situation. I view it much more as a continuum from almost safe to damned dangerous. It stems directly from the margin for error allowed at any moment. That margin for error must include errors due to pilot skill, weather conditions, other aircraft, and the unknown unknowns. You can affect only the first of those. If the margin for error is large (high, clear benign weather, etc.) the you are relatively safe. If the margin for error is allowed to go very low (circling at 400 ft over a field you've never landed in) the slightest of errors of any kind - not just pilot skill - can break through the margin to calamity.

Is circling at 2000 ft safe? Relatively. At 1000? not as much. At 500? a lot of things can go wrong. When stories are told of circling at 100 ft but it's safe because you are on final to a field - was this a field you landed in before? have any of the conditions changed? Is the wind gradient exactly as it was 3 years ago when last you were here?

There is also an attempt to conflate the nanny state with competition rules. This is specious. I am against helmet laws for motorcycles, even though I wear one every time I get on a bike. It's your brain. But in an organized motorcycle race, helmets are absolutely required. That isn't a "nanny state", and I'm not against it. Some motorcycle racers will argue they don't want to wear a helmet - its hot, gets in the way of vision, they don't wear one when they ride on the street, and they aren't going to ride any differently. Nevertheless it is required. I'm against a hard deck and any other unnecessary rules for soaring flight. But in soaring competition, as in every other form of competition, there needs to be limits on the worst tolerable behavior, not for that individual but for others who do not share their values, so that rewards are not proportional to bodily risk taken.

"the ability to assess and manage risk" has but one final arbiter: the failure to manage it resulting in mayhem. The measuring stick for this is: are there more accidents in competition than in normal cross country flight? I believe the answer is yes, meaning the risks are either higher or not being managed. Is the accident rate in competition acceptable? I don't believe it is, as long as it is higher than non-competition flying. I gather that many of the participants posting here disagree, as most seem to oppose any rules changes that might affect safety. "Risk" in the above quote ought to be the risk that you might have to slow down to maintain adequate altitude, or might land out at a known good site with plenty of time to do an ordinary, proper pattern and land. It should not be risk of putting the glider in an unknown field in unknown weather conditions while severely stressed and pressed for time.

You are very good at twisting others' words and thoughts to your own purposes. This doesn't make you particularly insightful, nor correct.

To some of us, it also makes you appear rather unpleasant company and a trifle dim :-).

If you can't trust yourself to be bigger than your own ego, if you cannot make the decisions to 1) quit racing and 2) quit soaring/start landing at appropriate times on your own, then you simply shouldn't race. My opinion If you and your friends want to create a race based on what you all agree is a safe space in the sky to cover for this fault, have at it. Or maybe you can just time your best three climbs of the day over the home airport and call that your test of soaring skill. I don't particularly care.

I do care that you continue to misrepresent my views and those of others that you do not agree with. That really needs to stop.

Evan Ludeman

On Tuesday, February 6, 2018 at 5:07:27 PM UTC-5, jfitch wrote:
On Tuesday, February 6, 2018 at 10:15:10 AM UTC-8, Tango Eight wrote:
On Tuesday, February 6, 2018 at 10:55:32 AM UTC-5, John Cochrane wrote:
T8: Part of what's being tested every time we go XC soaring (never mind competition) is the ability to assess and manage risk. I relish this. If you take this out of the game... well, it's no longer the same game.


Are you f...ing kidding? You voluntarily enjoy the ability to assess and manage physical risk.. and by definition to occasionally fail with potentially fatal results? What is this, aviation or climbing Mt. Everest?

Anyway, fear not dear T8. Even with a hard deck, you will still be flying a motorless aircraft, and there will be plenty of opportunity for you to scare yourself silly even though you no longer will get contest points for it. We'll even still give you points for flying in clouds, through thunderstorms, over unlandable terrain, shoot mountain passes with 10 feet to spare, and so forth. And the risk of losing points at 500 or 1000 feet might still be enough to keep you awake, though the hard ground won't give you quite the rush it used to.

I mean, really, of all the illogic on this thread, the idea that no longer giving contest points for what a pilot chooses to do under 500 or 1000 feet AGL, removes all risk from motorless aviation, so the pilot no longer has to "assess and manage risk" is the most ludicrous. You might as well argue that we remove parachutes, so pilots get more of the adrenaline rush of assessing and managing risks.

Oppose a hard deck if you will, but please bring some faint common sense, thought and logic to the discussion

John Cochrane

No, I'm not kidding. However I have (unintentionally) exposed your rather considerable confirmation bias.

I was responding to Jon's earlier stated idea to create a hard deck thousands of feet in the air.

What I relish is the fact that it's all on me as PIC. I have to be disciplined enough to know when to say "screw this, I'm landing", or "screw this, I'm at Tatum bound for Portales, it's blue, there's cirrus, I'm unfamiliar with the terrain, it looks like the moon, I'm out of my element, I'm fatigued, I'm going to stay with the clouds and wait" (day 1, 2013 15s). I relish the fact that I know I am bigger & stronger than my own ego. That day my score sucked but the glider was safely in the box, still shiny. My tie down neighbor's... not so much.

Back to the 500' thing: at 500' over a landable field, I'm landing. Duh. What the **** is going to happen in the 120 seconds between 500' and 250' that didn't happen in the last half hour? With about 99% probability... nothing at all.

ND: The smart thing to do if the nannies do have their way is leave all that airspace out of your nav equipment and just fly your best game. You tag the airspace, well sucks to be you.

I don't think we need the rule, I will oppose it if asked. My prediction is: if such a rule were adopted, it won't be 500' for very darned long.

Evan Ludeman / T8

Well, this discussion has been quite the education for me. Now this thread is only a sampling of about 10 pilots, but many among those consider taking occasional, considerable risks up to an including imminent chance of death part of soaring competition, because it has always been that way and they like it. I personally know a few pilots with similar attitudes towards the sport, but it is a small minority among the pilot community that I fly with.

An interesting side line to the discussion is the notion that safety is a binary quantity: you either are, or are not safe in a certain situation. I view it much more as a continuum from almost safe to damned dangerous. It stems directly from the margin for error allowed at any moment. That margin for error must include errors due to pilot skill, weather conditions, other aircraft, and the unknown unknowns. You can affect only the first of those. If the margin for error is large (high, clear benign weather, etc.) the you are relatively safe. If the margin for error is allowed to go very low (circling at 400 ft over a field you've never landed in) the slightest of errors of any kind - not just pilot skill - can break through the margin to calamity.

Is circling at 2000 ft safe? Relatively. At 1000? not as much. At 500? a lot of things can go wrong. When stories are told of circling at 100 ft but it's safe because you are on final to a field - was this a field you landed in before? have any of the conditions changed? Is the wind gradient exactly as it was 3 years ago when last you were here?

There is also an attempt to conflate the nanny state with competition rules. This is specious. I am against helmet laws for motorcycles, even though I wear one every time I get on a bike. It's your brain. But in an organized motorcycle race, helmets are absolutely required. That isn't a "nanny state", and I'm not against it. Some motorcycle racers will argue they don't want to wear a helmet - its hot, gets in the way of vision, they don't wear one when they ride on the street, and they aren't going to ride any differently. Nevertheless it is required. I'm against a hard deck and any other unnecessary rules for soaring flight. But in soaring competition, as in every other form of competition, there needs to be limits on the worst tolerable behavior, not for that individual but for others who do not share their values, so that rewards are not proportional to bodily risk taken.

"the ability to assess and manage risk" has but one final arbiter: the failure to manage it resulting in mayhem. The measuring stick for this is: are there more accidents in competition than in normal cross country flight? I believe the answer is yes, meaning the risks are either higher or not being managed. Is the accident rate in competition acceptable? I don't believe it is, as long as it is higher than non-competition flying. I gather that many of the participants posting here disagree, as most seem to oppose any rules changes that might affect safety. "Risk" in the above quote ought to be the risk that you might have to slow down to maintain adequate altitude, or might land out at a known good site with plenty of time to do an ordinary, proper pattern and land. It should not be risk of putting the glider in an unknown field in unknown weather conditions while severely stressed and pressed for time.

You are very good at twisting others' words and thoughts to your own purposes. This doesn't make you particularly insightful, nor correct.

To some of us, it also makes you appear rather unpleasant company and a trifle dim :-).

If you can't trust yourself to be bigger than your own ego, if you cannot make the decisions to 1) quit racing and 2) quit soaring/start landing at appropriate times on your own, then you simply shouldn't race. If you and your friends want to create a race based on what you all agree is a safe space in the sky to cover for this fault, have at it. Or maybe you can just time your best three climbs of the day over the home airport and call that your test of soaring skill. I don't particularly care.

I do care that you continue to misrepresent my views and those of others that you do not agree with. That really needs to stop.

Evan Ludeman

(apologies for multiple/deleted posts. One off color remark, one typo)

On Tuesday, February 6, 2018 at 10:49:28 PM UTC-5, Kevin Christner wrote:
On Tuesday, February 6, 2018 at 5:07:22 PM UTC-5, John Cochrane wrote:
John's academic work is all about how poorly crafted regulations give bad incentives. Regulation isn't about "more" or "less" it's about "smart" vs. "dumb", the latter often giving bad incentives.
John

John can't answer the well posed questions from others on whether his soaring regulations will be "smart" or "dumb" in practice. After some experience John will decide what is "smart" and "dumb" and then propose "more" and "better" regulations. Soon John will be the only one who understands the differential equations and SPSS runs required to interpret the "more" and "better" regulations. John will help the highest bidder of ClearNav or LX Nav program their CN3000 or LX 1,000,000. John will get rich. Hmm... this sounds like the kind of money the ACA "interpreters" are making that John so despises.

don't be a prat. we were having a civil discussion.

On Tuesday, February 6, 2018 at 5:07:27 PM UTC-5, jfitch wrote:
On Tuesday, February 6, 2018 at 10:15:10 AM UTC-8, Tango Eight wrote:
On Tuesday, February 6, 2018 at 10:55:32 AM UTC-5, John Cochrane wrote:
T8: Part of what's being tested every time we go XC soaring (never mind competition) is the ability to assess and manage risk. I relish this. If you take this out of the game... well, it's no longer the same game.


Are you f...ing kidding? You voluntarily enjoy the ability to assess and manage physical risk.. and by definition to occasionally fail with potentially fatal results? What is this, aviation or climbing Mt. Everest?

Anyway, fear not dear T8. Even with a hard deck, you will still be flying a motorless aircraft, and there will be plenty of opportunity for you to scare yourself silly even though you no longer will get contest points for it. We'll even still give you points for flying in clouds, through thunderstorms, over unlandable terrain, shoot mountain passes with 10 feet to spare, and so forth. And the risk of losing points at 500 or 1000 feet might still be enough to keep you awake, though the hard ground won't give you quite the rush it used to.

I mean, really, of all the illogic on this thread, the idea that no longer giving contest points for what a pilot chooses to do under 500 or 1000 feet AGL, removes all risk from motorless aviation, so the pilot no longer has to "assess and manage risk" is the most ludicrous. You might as well argue that we remove parachutes, so pilots get more of the adrenaline rush of assessing and managing risks.

Oppose a hard deck if you will, but please bring some faint common sense, thought and logic to the discussion

John Cochrane

No, I'm not kidding. However I have (unintentionally) exposed your rather considerable confirmation bias.

I was responding to Jon's earlier stated idea to create a hard deck thousands of feet in the air.

What I relish is the fact that it's all on me as PIC. I have to be disciplined enough to know when to say "screw this, I'm landing", or "screw this, I'm at Tatum bound for Portales, it's blue, there's cirrus, I'm unfamiliar with the terrain, it looks like the moon, I'm out of my element, I'm fatigued, I'm going to stay with the clouds and wait" (day 1, 2013 15s). I relish the fact that I know I am bigger & stronger than my own ego. That day my score sucked but the glider was safely in the box, still shiny. My tie down neighbor's... not so much.

Back to the 500' thing: at 500' over a landable field, I'm landing. Duh. What the **** is going to happen in the 120 seconds between 500' and 250' that didn't happen in the last half hour? With about 99% probability... nothing at all.

ND: The smart thing to do if the nannies do have their way is leave all that airspace out of your nav equipment and just fly your best game. You tag the airspace, well sucks to be you.

I don't think we need the rule, I will oppose it if asked. My prediction is: if such a rule were adopted, it won't be 500' for very darned long.

Evan Ludeman / T8

Well, this discussion has been quite the education for me. Now this thread is only a sampling of about 10 pilots, but many among those consider taking occasional, considerable risks up to an including imminent chance of death part of soaring competition, because it has always been that way and they like it. I personally know a few pilots with similar attitudes towards the sport, but it is a small minority among the pilot community that I fly with.

An interesting side line to the discussion is the notion that safety is a binary quantity: you either are, or are not safe in a certain situation. I view it much more as a continuum from almost safe to damned dangerous. It stems directly from the margin for error allowed at any moment. That margin for error must include errors due to pilot skill, weather conditions, other aircraft, and the unknown unknowns. You can affect only the first of those. If the margin for error is large (high, clear benign weather, etc.) the you are relatively safe. If the margin for error is allowed to go very low (circling at 400 ft over a field you've never landed in) the slightest of errors of any kind - not just pilot skill - can break through the margin to calamity.

Is circling at 2000 ft safe? Relatively. At 1000? not as much. At 500? a lot of things can go wrong. When stories are told of circling at 100 ft but it's safe because you are on final to a field - was this a field you landed in before? have any of the conditions changed? Is the wind gradient exactly as it was 3 years ago when last you were here?

There is also an attempt to conflate the nanny state with competition rules. This is specious. I am against helmet laws for motorcycles, even though I wear one every time I get on a bike. It's your brain. But in an organized motorcycle race, helmets are absolutely required. That isn't a "nanny state", and I'm not against it. Some motorcycle racers will argue they don't want to wear a helmet - its hot, gets in the way of vision, they don't wear one when they ride on the street, and they aren't going to ride any differently. Nevertheless it is required. I'm against a hard deck and any other unnecessary rules for soaring flight. But in soaring competition, as in every other form of competition, there needs to be limits on the worst tolerable behavior, not for that individual but for others who do not share their values, so that rewards are not proportional to bodily risk taken.

"the ability to assess and manage risk" has but one final arbiter: the failure to manage it resulting in mayhem. The measuring stick for this is: are there more accidents in competition than in normal cross country flight? I believe the answer is yes, meaning the risks are either higher or not being managed. Is the accident rate in competition acceptable? I don't believe it is, as long as it is higher than non-competition flying. I gather that many of the participants posting here disagree, as most seem to oppose any rules changes that might affect safety. "Risk" in the above quote ought to be the risk that you might have to slow down to maintain adequate altitude, or might land out at a known good site with plenty of time to do an ordinary, proper pattern and land. It should not be risk of putting the glider in an unknown field in unknown weather conditions while severely stressed and pressed for time.

I think you may be dramatizing this. not every off-field landing comes with a case of mild PTSD. in competition, they rarely occur at a known, and previously scouted location. some are stressful, yes. but i've had many that were totally benign.

flying gliders means that you are inherently at risk for putting a glider into a field every time you fly. the ability to assess and manage risk has everything to do with landing out. it's maybe the most important ability a cross country or competition pilot can have. its also just as critical for local pilots. the fields that they may have to land in are much more familiar, but the local pilot is less practiced at off-field landings.

Evan is right. each pilot has the responsibility to use sound judgement to hang it up and get the glider safely on the ground.

On Tuesday, February 6, 2018 at 5:07:27 PM UTC-5, jfitch wrote:


Well, this discussion has been quite the education for me [snip] The measuring stick for this is: are there more accidents in competition than in normal cross country flight? I believe the answer is yes, meaning the risks are either higher or not being managed.

..............

I agree that this is a very interesting and useful thread. Regarding the above comment about racing being more dangerous, I actually believe the answer is "yes", there are more accidents in competition soaring. I just don't believe it is related only or predominantly to "points" in anything other than the broadest sense.

This marks my 30th year of racing (hey, I started young), and on balance it's been an amazing journey. One comment you'll hear over and over again goes something like this: "I wouldn't have even taken the glider out of the box on a day like today, yet we just did a 200K task. WOW that was fun!" I can vividly recall a few competition days like that which were incredibly satisfying.

But therein lies the rub. As soon as we fly on anything but the most straightforward, reliable, benign days, we increase the likelihood of landouts (at least those of us who don't have motors). In many parts of the country, fields are not as plentiful or as big as we'd like, and there are rocks, posts, pipes and all sorts of other nasty things hiding in them that can damage our gliders. There are also wires, trees, fences, and other things that can snatch us out of the air and damage the pilot if we misjudge.

Since the decision (or indecision) that leads to attempted landings in marginal fields (for example) typically happen a long time prior to the final event, it suggests to me that we all need to take a big step back to understand the broader risk equation and what we are personally willing to accept or not accept. For example, a good friend of mine who is a competent racing pilot pretty much decided 10 years ago that he will not risk a field landout. Period. That means he’s unlikely to win a contest with a lot of weak weather, yet he still races and enjoys winning some days. I’ve personally made a lot of decisions in the last few years that took me out of the running on any given day (not flying through a heavy rain shower on the ridge, not overflying a 20 mile forest even though there were a few decent looking clouds on the direct route), and I’m happy with those decisions.

In the business world, we talk about Organizational Change Management when we feel the need to make major changes to how a company (or other entity) “works.� One of the accepted truths is that OCM is hard – much harder than just writing rules like “you will not remove safety guards on cutting equipment.� The biggest challenge is communication and education and getting buy-in. In the US, I think the safety talks before flying were a good idea, but the quality and message are pretty variable. If we really want to make it safer, then we ought to invest in communications (high quality video recordings for example along the lines of the ones that Sporty’s or King Schools articulating a few key messages in digestable chunks). Another option is to put a Personal Limits checklist into contest packages (landout, lowest climb, weather minima) and ask pilots to fill them out before the first day and hand them in.. Then, spot check a few during the course of the contest and have the CD/CM call out people who are violating their own stated rules. It’s a culture thing, and changing behavior is just plain hard.

FWIW – I think the above efforts would be a much more valuable contribution from our various competition organizations (Rules Committee, Team Selection Committee, etc.) than continuously debating and fine tuning scoring rules and such.

Erik Mann (P3)

On Tuesday, February 6, 2018 at 12:14:40 AM UTC-6, jfitch wrote:

I can't speak for John's idea, but the hard deck I was think of would break that chain back when you could do something about it.

I've been skeptical of the idea that losing speed points will change low save behavior once it happens - the inconvenience and risk of landing out in that moment seems to me to be the more important factors.

This is a slightly different take on the argument - and somewhat similar to the logic associated with low finish penalties. Can you create a penalty incentive that is a realistic inducement for pilots to climb a little higher, or glide a little flatter, to avoid ending up hazardously low and struggling?

I think the answer for the two decisions is decidedly different. On final glides over a known distance to a known finish height, a penalty gradient can specifically offset the points spent to take extra time to climb slowly in the last thermal of the day. A steeper penalty gradient can even influence the probabilistic assessment of a pilot contemplating leaving a slow-ish climb in hope of finding a better one in the limited number of miles on the way home.

On the other hand, on-course decisions are much less certain. The distance to the next thermal is much more uncertain and (depending on where you fly) the altitude you don't want to get below because you'll need to slow way below McCready speed is much higher than 500'.

Flying in the Great Basin there are places where pilots start dialing back at 3-4,000 AGL. Even in flatland soaring I don't know of many pilots who are steaming ahead at 90 knots at 1,500' AGL absent a dust-devil in the next mile or two. So, what pilot is going to take extra turns in a thermal at 5,000 AGL in anticipation of potentially getting committed to landing out at 500' instead of 350' some 35 miles ahead? Even a pilot who's down to 2,000' AGL over the prairie wouldn't (it seems to me) make different decisions because they perceive they'd have a fraction of a mile (from the 500'-350' difference) less range to search for lift before a landout. My limit for giving up on pressing on is closer to 1,000 than 350' so for decision-making purposes I'm above the Hard Deck, not below it.

The "stop the dangerous decision chain before it starts" argument doesn't seem to me to work - at least not with a 500' hard deck. You'd need more like 1500' feet or more in the east and something like 2-3,000' in a lot of places out west. If people are not up for the notion of a hard deck at 500' it's hard to imagine anyone getting excited about one high enough to alter the decisions that (only in a probabilistic sense) matter.

Andy Blackburn
9B