Hard Deck

On Monday, February 5, 2018 at 6:11:40 PM UTC-5, John Cochrane wrote:
Bumping below as no response from any hard deck advocates:

JC: Sorry. I get tired of answering the same questions over and over

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.

JC: Even were this true, it is not a logical argument against a hard deck at Seniors, Hobbs, Uvalde, Perry, Cesar creek, Ionia, etc. etc. etc. where a single MSL altitude for most of the task area would suffice. I

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.

JC: I love this old saw, it comes back again and again. We have to ban GPS, pilots will just be looking at their computers all the time! Dear friend, if you're down at 550 feet and you're looking slavishly at the pressure altitude on your flight recorder, you have a screw loose. Anyway, it's just one number. And every flight recorder has an audio warning of airspace violation. If at 550 feet you hear "ding! airspace" and you have to look down to wonder if you might be about to hit Class A, you have another screw loose..

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.

JC: treated many times before. Again, not a logical argument against trying it at flatland sites. Already stated that in a mifflin situation you carve a hole for ridge flying.

Undoubtedly you have other reasons not to want to do it, but these are not logical ones.

John cochrane

John,

It's not a question of staring incessantly at your screen. it's about having a SUA warning go "BUUH-REEEEE! ...AIRSPACE..." when you are at 500 feet (ostensibly 3/4 of the way through downwind). it's a legitimate distraction, no question.

Descending through 500 AGL on downwind:

"BUUH-REEEEEE!"

"****! was that my gear warning??" *cycles gear back UP unknowingly*

It sounds silly, but you know in a tense moment we do stupid things and get confused. i once saw a guy land in the same field as me, come to a stop, and pull his gear up.

i know harris hill is just one site, but there are many with similarities. to your point about hobbs perry et cet. flatland becomes simple. but at sites with slope-y terrain, why is it OK to cirlce within 500 feet of high ground with a valley close-by, but not down in the valleys? the hard deck doesn't protect you from stall/spin at sloping sites like NY,PA,VA,VT,UT,CA,NV if you're low over high ground. and there are lots of locations where you can be circling at 400 feet over a hilltop field, with a valley close by. copy and paste this link below and look what's 1.7 miles southwest of my marked location. i circled at 500 feet above the field i have marked. That's no different in terms of stall spin, than doing it in the valley. the only difference is that if i lost 100 feet i could glide out to the valley and be over an airport. but a spin right there coulda had me sleeping with the fishes:

,1355m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m9!1m2!2m1!1scostas+airport!3m5!1s0 x0:0x0!7e2!8m2!3d42.2037464!4d-77.111644!5m1!1e4

the hard deck does nothing to protect you in this situation. so i question it's overall effectiveness. if you look at a valley fog satellite loop for somewhere like harris hill, you'll realize just what a small percentage of the contest site you are covering with the hard deck in the half-dozen states i mention above. it leaves plenty of opportunities for low circling over landable non-ridge terrain.



but let's go back to flat sites. those places generally have a wide selection of large fields. this year at hobbs i landed in a field that was a no brainer in terms of size and obstructions, but it was SOFT. late in the day when it's calm, i think you'd find people cirlcing low to stay out of the field, hard deck or not. at flat land sites where the options are poor, (Hobbs, west) you could find people circling low to stay out of nasty terrain in what i'll call panic mode. it happened this year in fact.

My point isn't that a hard deck is stupid, or for nancies, or even that "this is another silly cochrane rule" (forgive me for that one, and please take it in the spirit in which it was intended). that IS how i felt at first, truly. but now, having considered the hard deck from many angles, and what it does/doesn't do, i don't think it prevents the circumstances people end up in, or their low altitude behavior. i think it just punishes them for it.. but as a punishment it doesn't prevent that behavior in the moment or even in the future.


i reiterate, 500 feet is quite low. but i've done it under certain conditions. a hard deck won't stop people from making low circles.