How dangerous is soaring?

My rudeness Patrick worked in getting you to cut to the chase. You
have no business in an aircraft if you equate it to skating on thin
ice. I figured you scared the crap out of yourself after doing
something stupid. That or you're stringing us along. Maybe you're
looking for attention. God knows.
Go buy a chainsaw and cut down a tree. When you're done , you'll know
what to do.
R

wrote:

But my
main consern still is that people dies. Of course you can die
anywhere, doing anything. But none of my tennis friends hasn't died on
tennis court. None of my icehockey friends hasn't died on ice rink.
None of my sailing friends hasn't died while sailing and so on... But
I've lost and wittnessed way too many fatalities. It totally changes
your view when you are first person on an fatal accident site. Done
that 4 times. Sure there has been stupid errors, but still. You can't
rig your tennis racket wrong...


OK..you're thinking too much.

That's the first sign.

Time to quit.

--
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On Oct 30, 6:50 pm, "BT" wrote:
How dangerous is rock climbing.. trained people fall every year and die..

Woot! Stand by for a "wear ur helmet" post from Majid...

Fairly stupid comment.

I have come to the same point as Patrick a couple of years ago (although
with just about half the experience) when in my region a had a total of 18
fatalities in one year. Southeastern France is probably the most crowded
gliding aerea you could imagine, but 18 is a lot, and 3 of them were members
of my club.

I was asking myself the question when I would be the next, and I stepped
back from gliding for almost a year to have a thourough thought at it (and
to discuss alot with gliding buddies).

I came to the conclusion that attitude towards the risk of flying is the
most important point, and that the key point for maximum safety is to be
*always* aware of the situation and of one's actual personal abilities and
limits - *always* and in *every* situation. One glitch can be the fatal one.

If others don't follow that rule and have a hard encounter with the planet,
I won't be able to change that.

So I decided to live as best as possible up to that rule, and not to be
negatively influenced by the fate of the 5-10 fellow pilots who die every
year here in Europe.

After that decision, I went and bough my first glider (after 17 years of
club operation).
And I enjoyed every single minute I spent flying it (and the upgrade gliders
which came up eventually). The only question I put myself since was - how to
get more flight time....

Bert


"Kloudy via AviationKB.com" u33403@uwe wrote in message
news:7a84aae7eb4e9@uwe...
wrote:

But my
main consern still is that people dies. Of course you can die
anywhere, doing anything. But none of my tennis friends hasn't died on
tennis court. None of my icehockey friends hasn't died on ice rink.
None of my sailing friends hasn't died while sailing and so on... But
I've lost and wittnessed way too many fatalities. It totally changes
your view when you are first person on an fatal accident site. Done
that 4 times. Sure there has been stupid errors, but still. You can't
rig your tennis racket wrong...


OK..you're thinking too much.

That's the first sign.

Time to quit.

--
Message posted via AviationKB.com
http://www.aviationkb.com/Uwe/Forums...aring/200710/1

Earlier, Tom Seim wrote:

Excuse me here, but what exactly is your f**king point?...

...Nothing that I, or anyone else, can say is going to change
your mind...


That seems a bit contradictory to me. If nothing said will change his
mind, that kind of takes the point out of saying it. It certainly adds
a bit of a question mark to the f-bomb. Tragedies like the one at hand
often shake people along fault lines they didn't even know existed.

Wandering off-topic, I have to see this most recent accident from the
parental perspective. I've flown with Emil Kissel, and I know that he
has been passionately devoted to soaring, and devoted to promoting and
furthering it. My heart goes out to him. As a parent, I have to look
at soaring through the perspective of, is this something I'd sign the
consent form for? That might sound like an element of triviata, but it
is not. It is, in fact, crucial to the development of soaring as a
sport and crucial to the maintenace of the critical mass that keeps it
viable. We totally need to keep drawing in the kidlings, keep forging
them into safe, conscientious pilots who temper their caution with a
touch of boldness. And we can talk ourselves blue in the face about
how safe soaring can be, how safe the training regime is, how safe
training makes for safe pilots. But that's maybe a tough sell when you
see a lot of what's behind the gelcoat.

Bob K.

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

Bert Willing wrote:
Fairly stupid comment.


uh, not really.

But despite your poor manner I will elucidate for our thread host.

One year several friends and acquaintances died around me in soaring
accidents.
The year my daughter was born.
Everytime I climbed into the plane I began thinking about how the small
increase in risk to my safety became more acute to those counting on me. The
results of those risks were suddenly clearer, close and personal.
I thought about my friends.
I thought about my family.
Being too careful was starting to interfere with fluid responses to my
piloting.

I was thinking too much. Risk increased.

I Quit for 15 years to reduce the probability of injury in the interest of
those relying on my health.

Returned to soaring as our social/family/financial situation matured.

My mind is not occupied outside the task of piloting anymore.

Too much analysis can be a hazard.

--
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How dangerous is soaring? Is that even the right question?

My glider is safe. It's tucked away in my garage going nowhere. It's not
going to crash - at least until I fly it. Gliders don't crash, they require
a pilot to crash them. Long ago in the early days of flying it was said
that the weakest link in aviation safety is the "loose nut on the control
stick" meaning the pilot. Pogo said, "We have met the enemy and he is us".

The above is not to denigrate anyone alive or dead. In fact, it's a cut and
paste from an e-mail exchange with Stu Kissel. He thought it was a good
observation.

Pilots can sometimes be described as safe or unsafe. Mostly, there're
somewhere in between. Being human, pilots have good days and bad days. For
a pilot, a bad day can be really bad.

Soaring is neither safe nor unsafe - it's just very unforgiving. If you
aren't rock solid sure of your skills, get a second opinion - fly with an
instructor. In fact, even if you are sure, fly with one anyway. Check
rides fall in the category of "cheap insurance." If you are like nost of us
and fly only 20 or so times a year, your skills will fade so schedule
checkrides twice a year. Your insturctor will appreciate the business - and
applaud your good judgement.

Soaring is mostly done solo. We expect a pilot, alone n the sky, under
significant stress, to function at a very high level with no backup of any
kind. Recently, a very unsettling medical news item said that 50% of the
people in the general population over age 50 had experienced at least one
episode of unexplained loss of consiousness. That makes one think about
2-seaters and a second pilot. It makes me think of Stu.

My condolences to everyone - we're all family.

Bill Daniels

On Oct 31, 8:09 am, Ian wrote:
On 31 Oct, 11:32, 1LK wrote:





On Oct 31, 5:36 am, Ian wrote:
How old are you? A 1 in 80 chance of dying today means that you
have a

79 in 80 chance of making it to tomorrow, which is a (79/80)^365 = 1%
chance of making it through a year. I'll bet even 100 year olds have a
better survival rate than that ...

Ian

Well under 100. Ian (although not as far under as I'd like). It's a
Not exactly. The odds ratio applies to any point in time; it's
neither cumulative or additive. I have a 98.75% chance of being here
tomorrow; on a day a year from now I'll have roughly the same odds of
being here a day after that.

I do wear a parachute, BTW, but again, given my age and condition,
it's not certain that I could extract myself successfully from a lawn
dart. I wear it because I'd rather be busy trying to use it, than
sitting on my hands waiting to hit the ground.

As you know, FLARM isn't usable here (US), but I'm planning to add a
transponder and an ELT this year. I take aspirin as well. Not sure
why I post to Usinet, perhaps the riskiest activity of all.

I control what I can and accept the rest and, yes, I think I'll go
flying.

Ray Warshaw
1LK

multifactorial analysis and some of the factors that go into it are
personal, but, given the assumptions, it's probably a decent
characterization. The risk isn't additive, BTW; it remains about the
same day to day as long as the factors used to calculate it are
stable.

So you really do only have a 1% chance of being here next year? What
are you doing posting to Usenet - go flying. It's probably not worth
buying a flarm, by the way. Or a parachute.

Ian- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

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). "