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  #81  
Old January 30th 18, 07:29 AM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
Andy Blackburn[_3_]
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On Monday, January 29, 2018 at 3:04:43 PM UTC-8, Steve Koerner wrote:
On Monday, January 29, 2018 at 1:49:35 PM UTC-7, Andy Blackburn wrote:
I sort of had a different version on all of this.

Let the scoring program calculate and flag any circling flight below XXX feet AGL. At that altitude the default is you get a 100 point penalty and at 80% of XXX' the default penalty is a landout. The pilot who gets flagged may then go to the CD and make his/her case for why his flying was safe because he was: 1) circling over high ground or 2) in a pattern for a good field landing into the wind or uphill and had arrived at an altitude to properly scout the landing. These things don't happen that often so I don't see a big burden for CDs and if the goal is to not give points benefits to deliberately irresponsible behavior, maybe that would do it. No SUA files, just use good judgement. If you did a low save off the downwind to base turn on approach to a beautiful field - good job! If you made a set of terrible choices and did a best L/D glide to a downwind straight-in to a terrible field and scraped one off the trees next to the high-tension wires, maybe you don't get the passing grade.

Just an idea. I'm sure it's fatally flawed in some way to someone.

Andy Blackburn
9B


You're wanting to penalize folks based on an unreferenced altimeter? I'd engineered a way to avoid that problem -- that is by sampling examination of only those competitors that ended up landing out (and are thereby locally referenced). That makes it so that you are able to have XXX be a tighter measure that isn't wasting altitude and actually correlates exactly with what your eyeball had said about AGL height. By my proposal there is no need to ever have concern about how your altimeter has been impacted by temperature or weather change or location. I think the use of sampling examination would be just as effective in motivating better pilotage in the area of dangerously low saves.

Your proposal requires software. My proposal can be implemented this year by any CD who chooses to do so; the rules and software are in place.

I prefer no altitude be wasted to altimeter uncertainty because that has the ultimate effect of wasting airspace thus impinging on my aviating freewill if I end up having to monitor the instruments and land from a higher altitude than I would otherwise. The measurement uncertainty also will create a problem in the mind of the CD who is assessing the penalty: "Gee sir, I'm sure I wasn't that low, I think the pressure must have been higher out to the east."


Well, my idea is that you get a pass if you can demonstrate to the CD and the contest committee that you were in position to make a landing into a specific field going the right direction. A soft deck if you will. The software just flags possible abuses using a combination of GPS and baro altitude, but it's up to the pilot to demonstrate that it wasn't a brain-dead maneuver. Certainly if you land there the altitude is more certain, but I think generally it's a bit less about the altitude than the situation. Push it down low and you better have a plan. If you have a plan, no problem. If you can't come up with what passes for a plan - even after the fact - you get subjected to the collective judgement of contest committee. The uncertainty of when you get tagged makes it even more important to always have a plan. People like absolute, quantitative rules, but this doesn't seem to be a situation where software is going to be able to tell if you were flying in a safe manner, but your fellow pilots may have a pretty good shot at getting it right.

I don't think I've turned in a thermal below 500' since the 80s. Is this really a habit for people? Doesn't seem like a winning strategy to push that low on a regular basis.

Andy Blackburn
9B
  #82  
Old January 30th 18, 09:49 AM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
krasw
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No one circles at 300ft, that is just bs. At that altitude you are on short final for landing. Don't believe everything you read folks. If someone has done it once and survive, congrats, please do not pass the story on.
  #83  
Old January 30th 18, 01:37 PM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
Tango Eight
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On Tuesday, January 30, 2018 at 3:49:52 AM UTC-5, krasw wrote:
No one circles at 300ft, that is just bs. At that altitude you are on short final for landing. Don't believe everything you read folks. If someone has done it once and survive, congrats, please do not pass the story on.


I am still waiting for the data, myself. I have flight logs of guys who flew themselves into a bad situation and essentially (my term) panicked, wouldn't commit to the landing because the landing was bound to be crappy. Turning downwind at 80 feet will make it so! I have flight logs of engine starts at 300' with no place to crash. We have the pictures of the wrecks that happened when the engine didn't start at 300'. I have no logs of Nationals contenders or Regional winners that show anything like an intentional roll of the dice to a very low, day or contest winning thermal pulled out of the weeds. Pre-GPS stories are **stories**. Some may even be true. But if you put one of the famous risk takers of old (there were some) against any decent modern soaring pilot in similar hardware, they would not stand a chance. Steady, efficient flying beats the hell out of attempted heroics.

Sometimes the flight into "unlandable terrain" you thought was crazy was simply well managed. There may be a field you don't know about. Flying into any situation that you can survive unscathed only by figuring out a way to climb is sheer lunacy. No one can do this very many times before statistics catch up with them.

The problem children w.r.t. low thermalling are the new guys. I have circled at 300'. When I was a new guy. I'd struggle down to 300' then finally roll the wings level and land, generally in some huge flat benign field. When confronted with more challenging options, I was a little smarter. I made some spaghetti patterns down to about 300' as recently as perhaps 8 years ago. And I finally concluded that it was much more satisfying to give up a little more gracefully and fly my pattern and landing with panache. While I don't enjoy the risk or inconvenience, the patterns and landings are usually quite interesting and even fun. There are always problems to be solved, the places I end up are often very beautiful.

Important aside: Anyone who has had the opportunity to do some RC model soaring will learn much about thermal structure below 500'. And none of what you learn will make you inclined to try it at full scale. It is quite unlikely to work.

As an instructor and XC advocate, the single biggest concern I have is getting the new guys calibrated on risk assessment & risk management. We have seen cases of guys who are very willing to stack on risk in attempt to hang with glider pilots who are much better soaring pilots. Depending on terrain (and we have much that is difficult in New England) that can / eventually will lead to disaster if unchecked. The new guy mindset seems to be (in some cases) "XC soaring is dangerous, I might as well get used to it and man up". I wonder how much this attitude is fueled by threads such as this?

best,
Evan Ludeman / T8
  #84  
Old January 30th 18, 02:20 PM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
[email protected]
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On Tuesday, January 30, 2018 at 7:38:01 AM UTC-5, Tango Eight wrote:
On Tuesday, January 30, 2018 at 3:49:52 AM UTC-5, krasw wrote:
No one circles at 300ft, that is just bs. At that altitude you are on short final for landing. Don't believe everything you read folks. If someone has done it once and survive, congrats, please do not pass the story on.


I am still waiting for the data, myself. I have flight logs of guys who flew themselves into a bad situation and essentially (my term) panicked, wouldn't commit to the landing because the landing was bound to be crappy. Turning downwind at 80 feet will make it so! I have flight logs of engine starts at 300' with no place to crash. We have the pictures of the wrecks that happened when the engine didn't start at 300'. I have no logs of Nationals contenders or Regional winners that show anything like an intentional roll of the dice to a very low, day or contest winning thermal pulled out of the weeds. Pre-GPS stories are **stories**. Some may even be true. But if you put one of the famous risk takers of old (there were some) against any decent modern soaring pilot in similar hardware, they would not stand a chance. Steady, efficient flying beats the hell out of attempted heroics.

Sometimes the flight into "unlandable terrain" you thought was crazy was simply well managed. There may be a field you don't know about. Flying into any situation that you can survive unscathed only by figuring out a way to climb is sheer lunacy. No one can do this very many times before statistics catch up with them.

The problem children w.r.t. low thermalling are the new guys. I have circled at 300'. When I was a new guy. I'd struggle down to 300' then finally roll the wings level and land, generally in some huge flat benign field. When confronted with more challenging options, I was a little smarter. I made some spaghetti patterns down to about 300' as recently as perhaps 8 years ago. And I finally concluded that it was much more satisfying to give up a little more gracefully and fly my pattern and landing with panache. While I don't enjoy the risk or inconvenience, the patterns and landings are usually quite interesting and even fun. There are always problems to be solved, the places I end up are often very beautiful.

Important aside: Anyone who has had the opportunity to do some RC model soaring will learn much about thermal structure below 500'. And none of what you learn will make you inclined to try it at full scale. It is quite unlikely to work.

As an instructor and XC advocate, the single biggest concern I have is getting the new guys calibrated on risk assessment & risk management. We have seen cases of guys who are very willing to stack on risk in attempt to hang with glider pilots who are much better soaring pilots. Depending on terrain (and we have much that is difficult in New England) that can / eventually will lead to disaster if unchecked. The new guy mindset seems to be (in some cases) "XC soaring is dangerous, I might as well get used to it and man up". I wonder how much this attitude is fueled by threads such as this?

best,
Evan Ludeman / T8

It is dumb even when flying a plastic shopping bag. But here is what it looks like being done. You can see how small/weak the thermals are. If you can't go that slow it almost certainly isn't going to work.
https://youtu.be/-nzj9TR8pdI?t=2m51s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGQqmXGtfjw
  #85  
Old January 30th 18, 03:06 PM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
ND
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On Monday, January 29, 2018 at 3:00:15 PM UTC-5, Tango Eight wrote:
On Monday, January 29, 2018 at 2:45:41 PM UTC-5, Jonathan St. Cloud wrote:
Golly, I thought at the 2017 18 meter nationals, they had a 50 ft finish line?


Any contest that includes a sports class has to use a finish ring with the designated minimum. The finish line still puts in an occasional guest appearance at Nats.

T8


well, and thank god for that!
  #86  
Old January 30th 18, 03:58 PM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
ND
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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


I invite you to apply hard deck logic to this flight. i'm genuinely curious to hear how a hard deck would handle this sort of situation:
https://www.onlinecontest.org/olc-2....tId=1097283864

Look at the KML file. i'm talking specifically about the final leg. i was ridge soaring the lower step of stone mountain on the last leg of the race. had i slowed down and taken time to get to the higher step, (no reason to, the lower step was working fine)i would not have won the day, and by extension, the nationals. i was perhaps 600 feet above the valley floor. sometimes less. constantly watching the fields go by, revising landing options every 30 seconds.

this was perfectly safe, and if i hadn't done it i wouldn't have won the contest. it's a situation that the hard deck wouldn't allow for. for 13 miles i was 600 feet agl. my tone is not adversarial, i just want to see how you would handle this situation. i think the hard deck idea is too black and white for all the possible scenarios.
  #87  
Old January 30th 18, 04:22 PM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
Steve Koerner
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On Monday, January 29, 2018 at 11:29:24 PM UTC-7, Andy Blackburn wrote:
On Monday, January 29, 2018 at 3:04:43 PM UTC-8, Steve Koerner wrote:
On Monday, January 29, 2018 at 1:49:35 PM UTC-7, Andy Blackburn wrote:
I sort of had a different version on all of this.

Let the scoring program calculate and flag any circling flight below XXX feet AGL. At that altitude the default is you get a 100 point penalty and at 80% of XXX' the default penalty is a landout. The pilot who gets flagged may then go to the CD and make his/her case for why his flying was safe because he was: 1) circling over high ground or 2) in a pattern for a good field landing into the wind or uphill and had arrived at an altitude to properly scout the landing. These things don't happen that often so I don't see a big burden for CDs and if the goal is to not give points benefits to deliberately irresponsible behavior, maybe that would do it. No SUA files, just use good judgement. If you did a low save off the downwind to base turn on approach to a beautiful field - good job! If you made a set of terrible choices and did a best L/D glide to a downwind straight-in to a terrible field and scraped one off the trees next to the high-tension wires, maybe you don't get the passing grade.

Just an idea. I'm sure it's fatally flawed in some way to someone.

Andy Blackburn
9B


You're wanting to penalize folks based on an unreferenced altimeter? I'd engineered a way to avoid that problem -- that is by sampling examination of only those competitors that ended up landing out (and are thereby locally referenced). That makes it so that you are able to have XXX be a tighter measure that isn't wasting altitude and actually correlates exactly with what your eyeball had said about AGL height. By my proposal there is no need to ever have concern about how your altimeter has been impacted by temperature or weather change or location. I think the use of sampling examination would be just as effective in motivating better pilotage in the area of dangerously low saves.

Your proposal requires software. My proposal can be implemented this year by any CD who chooses to do so; the rules and software are in place.

I prefer no altitude be wasted to altimeter uncertainty because that has the ultimate effect of wasting airspace thus impinging on my aviating freewill if I end up having to monitor the instruments and land from a higher altitude than I would otherwise. The measurement uncertainty also will create a problem in the mind of the CD who is assessing the penalty: "Gee sir, I'm sure I wasn't that low, I think the pressure must have been higher out to the east."


Well, my idea is that you get a pass if you can demonstrate to the CD and the contest committee that you were in position to make a landing into a specific field going the right direction. A soft deck if you will. The software just flags possible abuses using a combination of GPS and baro altitude, but it's up to the pilot to demonstrate that it wasn't a brain-dead maneuver. Certainly if you land there the altitude is more certain, but I think generally it's a bit less about the altitude than the situation. Push it down low and you better have a plan. If you have a plan, no problem. If you can't come up with what passes for a plan - even after the fact - you get subjected to the collective judgement of contest committee. The uncertainty of when you get tagged makes it even more important to always have a plan. People like absolute, quantitative rules, but this doesn't seem to be a situation where software is going to be able to tell if you were flying in a safe manner, but your fellow pilots may have a pretty good shot at getting it right.

I don't think I've turned in a thermal below 500' since the 80s. Is this really a habit for people? Doesn't seem like a winning strategy to push that low on a regular basis.

Andy Blackburn
9B


I think the 300 ft number comes up as a level that everyone will agree to be unambiguously dangerous and deserving of sanction. That does not imply that 301 feet is safe. It is not. Earlier in this discussion, the concern was raised -
that someone might interpret that being above the sanction level, whatever that is set at, makes it OK.

The suggestion that an armchair committee might judge the safety margin of a landing without having been there and without an accurate flight log seems pretty silly to me. Make a penalty assessment on that basis and you'll have people storming away with their glider in tow. Rules need to be objective.
  #88  
Old January 30th 18, 04:25 PM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
Tango Eight
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On Tuesday, January 30, 2018 at 9:58:45 AM UTC-5, ND wrote:
I invite you to apply hard deck logic to this flight.


John's been really clear about this... read it again Andy. His intent isn't to mess with ridge & mountain flying in any way.

Away from the airport, away from the ridge, he's proposing a 500' stairstep with a 500 agl minimum. In the big valley at Mifflin (elevation 800-ish) that's a 1500 msl hard deck. Can you thermal safely out of the Mifflin valley from 1500msl on a nice easy day? Certainly. John's proposal is to give you an administrative landout **before** you become dangerous to yourself..

best,
Evan Ludeman / T8
  #89  
Old January 30th 18, 05:27 PM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
Justin Craig[_3_]
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John's been really clear about this... read it again Andy.

John has not been really clear, John has rvised his rule as the discusion
has gone on.


I would argue that putting a hard deck rule in place has the ability to
create a safety issue rather than mitigate it.

What happens when the competitor drops below the proposed hard deck?

Must they simply land?

Do they give up trying, and then land out trying to get home, possibl
unfocussed and a bit dejected?

You would then be putting pilots in a situation where they are forced int
landing in an unknown environment and by doing so increasing the risk.

Statistics are statistics and can be manipulated to give the desire
outcome.

The issue here is field section, or lack thereof.

There are many factors that influence what is a safe height to climb away:

1) Experience
2) Hours on type
3) Terrain
4) Having a chosen / planned land out option
5) Aircraft type
6) Weather - reliable day Vs unreliable day

Competition gliding is in decline, keep adding rules which removes th
pilot judgment, the decline will be more rapid.

Just my humble opinion.

1000 + hours
Flown 15+ contests
Past contest director
150 hours in the mountains.



  #90  
Old January 30th 18, 05:40 PM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
Karl Striedieck[_2_]
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This hard deck concept fits in with the liberal, big brother, zero pain concept emanating from DC that is gradually dumbing down and choking away individual freedoms in our lives. Same for the min cylinder finish height.
Pilots know that engaging in any activity that exceeds 10 mph or 10 feet high has an element of danger. Let the pilot decide whether to chance a landing in field with hidden fences, wires, holes, crops, or animals or climb out and fly home.
As for the worry that a low save gives the pilot an advantage on the score sheet, forget it. Such events eat up a lot of time and result in a back page score.

Karl Striedieck

 




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