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Put your money where the risk is



 
 
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  #71  
Old November 30th 19, 02:38 PM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
Charles Ethridge
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Posts: 33
Default Put your money where the risk is

On Saturday, November 30, 2019 at 7:29:56 AM UTC-5, Martin Gregorie wrote:
On Sat, 30 Nov 2019 00:30:19 -0800, Branko Stojkovic wrote:


A good analysis. Thanks.


--
Martin | martin at
Gregorie | gregorie dot org


Agree.

My takeaways/ideas from the above thus far:

1. Stay humble.

2. Get lots of dual time with someone who is demonstrably better at racing (or cross-country) than you, AND who has a reputation for putting safety first.

3. Try to get a ballistic parachute retro-fitted into your glider (Is this even possible?). Encourage manufacturers to install these in new gliders.

4. Encourage SSA to require a reasonable, safe hard deck for all races. (Sorry, hot dogs, it's for your own good. :-))

Ben

  #72  
Old November 30th 19, 03:54 PM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
Jonathon May
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Posts: 82
Default Put your money where the risk is

At 13:38 30 November 2019, Charles Ethridge wrote:
On Saturday, November 30, 2019 at 7:29:56 AM UTC-5,

Martin Gregorie wrote:
On Sat, 30 Nov 2019 00:30:19 -0800, Branko Stojkovic

wrote:


A good analysis. Thanks.


--
Martin | martin at
Gregorie | gregorie dot org


Agree.

My takeaways/ideas from the above thus far:

1. Stay humble.

2. Get lots of dual time with someone who is demonstrably

better at racing
(or cross-country) than you, AND who has a reputation for

putting safety
first.

3. Try to get a ballistic parachute retro-fitted into your glider

(Is this
even possible?). Encourage manufacturers to install these in

new gliders.




4. Encourage SSA to require a reasonable, safe hard deck

for all races.
(Sorry, hot dogs, it's for your own good. :-))

Ben



One of the problems is that as we age the time it takes to
make a decision increases.
So if you keep your hours reasonably high, your stick and
rudder skill should stay OK but your thinking time might
increase.

This year my annual ride with the boss was short, every one at
the launch point was having great fun and when I was asked
to fly from the front seat ,several people said "He is going to
be checking your look out".
So it was a genuine surprise when the tug wings wagged at
250ft on the tow out.

Thankfully the auto- reflexes are till working.I pulled the
release, pushed the nose down and commenced a turn before
either of us had chance to speak.
My chief instructor knows what to look for in different pilots
thats why he is a paid professional with over 20 years gliding
instructor training behind him.
I on the other hand am an ageing amateur giving my time for
free and fighting the onset of age with some trepidations
,because I know one of us is going to have to call "time"
before it all goes wrong.

To sum up I think an experienced professional examiner should
be able to check for the weakness that could hurt you .
Whether it's an over confident beginner or an over the hill old
timer.



  #73  
Old November 30th 19, 04:07 PM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
Eric Greenwell[_4_]
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Posts: 1,939
Default Put your money where the risk is

Charles Ethridge wrote on 11/30/2019 5:38 AM:
3. Try to get a ballistic parachute retro-fitted into your glider (Is this even possible?). Encourage manufacturers to install these in new gliders.


I don't know of any that can be retro-fitted, but there are some gliders that have
them as options or standard equipment, like the Silent 2 and GP14/GP15. My Phoenix
touring motorglider has one, and I find it a great comfort, as does my wife (it's
a two seater, she flies with me sometimes). It's more convenient, too, as I don't
have to put on a parachute, but simply get in and buckle up. Easier getting out of
the glider at the end of the flight, too.

--
Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA (change ".netto" to ".us" to email me)
- "A Guide to Self-Launching Sailplane Operation"
https://sites.google.com/site/motorg...ad-the-guide-1
  #74  
Old November 30th 19, 06:54 PM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
2G
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Posts: 1,439
Default Put your money where the risk is

On Saturday, November 30, 2019 at 12:30:21 AM UTC-8, Branko Stojkovic wrote:
On Friday, November 29, 2019 at 2:53:54 PM UTC-8, 2G wrote:
I don't want to over-think things here - it actually is a pretty basic concept. If you have poor stick-and-rudder skills, or poor decision making skills, or both, you are an accident waiting to happen.

Tom


It is true that poor stick-and-rudder skills and/or poor decision-making skills cause majority of fatal and non-fatal accidents, and near misses. Case closed!

Or is it?

With regards to the stick-and-rudder skills, the matter is pretty straight forward. In general, there is a direct correlation/causation between the flying experience and the stick-and-rudder skill level, i.e., the beginners have limited skills and the experts have excellent skills. Furthermore, most pilots can fairly accurately assess their own stick-and-rudder skills. A yearly check ride with an instructor provides a useful feedback about the areas that need improvement.

Okay, so what about them decision-making skills, which also vary among the glider pilot population? It is safe to say that in this case there is a much weaker correlation between the flying experience and the skill level. It seems that the decision-making skills are much more related to the psychological makeup of the pilot and makes things much more complicated and causes several intractable problems.

Problem #1: Few of us who have poor decision-making skills are aware of that fact. The simplest reason is that we have been getting away with making certain types of poor decisions. Even if our poor decisions caused us a few incidents or near misses, we are inclined to place the blame elsewhere (very likely), instead of openly examining our decision-making processes (not likely) or seeking help/advice (very unlikely).

Problem #2: There are no established methods of tracking the decision-making skills, nor of providing feedback, like there is for the stick-and-rudder skills. Some experienced pilots, when they see that someone has made a poor decision, will speak to that pilot and point out the problem. Others will not, likely because of their own personality and/or the offending pilot's personality. In any case, only few of our bad decisions will be pointed out to us.

Problem #3: Even if someone tells me that I made a bad decision, or God forbid, that my decision-making skills are lacking, I will likely take that as a personal attack because of an instant emotional reaction of my injured ego. What happens next will depend on my psychological makeup. If I am rough around the edges, or have a short fuse, I may tell you to bugger off and mind you own damn business. On the other hand, if I'm polite and easy going, I may smile and say "okay thanks I appreciate it," but in my head I'd be thinking "F#@$ YOU, you know-it-all." The problem is that in either case, I have not learned a damn thing from this experience. If anything, it may motivate me to do the same thing (make the same poor decision) again, just to prove (at least to myself) that it's no big deal.

If the above analysis is correct, then is there a solution? There better be, because lives are at stake. I suggest starting by asking yourself a simple question:

"Do I sometime make poor decisions that could cause me to have an accident?"

If your answer is "yes", then you are sufficiently self-aware and you are probably in the process of improving your decision-making skills.

If your answer is "no" or "not that I'm aware off", then you have a problem that might one day cost you your life. In order to make progress you may need help, professional or otherwise.

Branko XYU


Branko,

I will answer your question right after you answer this one: do you think Masak made a bad decision(s) that cost him his life?

Tom
  #75  
Old November 30th 19, 07:32 PM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
Phil Plane
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Posts: 9
Default Put your money where the risk is

On Saturday, 30 November 2019 21:30:21 UTC+13, Branko Stojkovic wrote:

With regards to the stick-and-rudder skills, the matter is pretty straight forward. In general, there is a direct correlation/causation between the flying experience and the stick-and-rudder skill level, i.e., the beginners have limited skills and the experts have excellent skills. Furthermore, most pilots can fairly accurately assess their own stick-and-rudder skills. A yearly check ride with an instructor provides a useful feedback about the areas that need improvement.


Well I would take issue with that statement. I fly with a wide range of pilots from a wide range of backgrounds and have learned to be careful with generalisations.

I have flown with experienced competition pilots with thousands of hours who I would not be comfortable with in a tricky situation. I have flown with pilots who have barely finished their training with a few hundred hours who I wouldn't want to take control from for fear of embarrassing myself because they flew so precisely and correctly. I don't even try to guess in advance which is which any more. I wait for the evidence.

So I would suggest that good handling skills can be learned relatively quickly, but that they don't just get better with repetition. You need to actively try to improve.

Many 'experienced' pilots have been doing the same thing over an over and have embedded bad habits or lazy handling into their flying.

The biggest difference I see is many low time pilots know they haven't learned enough yet and want to get better.

When pilots just want to get by, they should probably think of moving to an activity that doesn't punish mistakes quite as hard.

Okay, so what about them decision-making skills, which also vary among the glider pilot population? It is safe to say that in this case there is a much weaker correlation between the flying experience and the skill level. It seems that the decision-making skills are much more related to the psychological makeup of the pilot and makes things much more complicated and causes several intractable problems.


This is the major factor. If you come up with a solution, let me know.

--
Phil Plane

  #76  
Old November 30th 19, 09:21 PM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
India November[_2_]
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Posts: 31
Default Put your money where the risk is

On Friday, November 29, 2019 at 5:53:54 PM UTC-5, 2G wrote:
On Friday, November 29, 2019 at 12:44:05 PM UTC-8, Andy Blackburn wrote:
I think you have a much stronger sense that you are master of your destiny than many of us. I've certainly read the stall-spin stories of pilots in benign-handling trainers on a clear, windless day simply misjudging the turn to final by getting too low and ruddering the turn until they depart the airplane. It happens and it's about as close to 100% pilot error and poor airmanship as you can get. There are a number of those in the public record. I just think many cases are more complex than that and sit at the end of an accumulation of decisions where the pilot estimates wrong on which is the less-risky choice to make. I think this is particularly true if you are pushing for performance - you make risk-reward tradeoffs all the time and many of those are based on a sample of experience that is just insufficient for the range of situations that randomness can throw at you - but they work out 99.9% of the time - you just don't know if it's 99.9% or 99.999% and over time that matters.

Example: The Ethiopian 737MAX flight crew, faced with runaway trim and control forces too high to hold the nose up elected to re-engage the MCAS system to get electric trim back. It turned out not to help and lot of people died. It is possible that if they'd made the exact right choices at the exact right time they might've saved the aircraft, so is the fact that they failed '****-poor airmanship' or something more complex? They knew that MCAS-induced trim runaway was possible from the prior accident only weeks before. There was a much-criticized NYT op-ed that basically called the Ethiopian crew bad pilots. Most other experts said the situation was one that put so much stress on the crew that it's not reasonable to expect airmanship should be the correct solution to the problem, even if airmanship could've saved it. With perfect airmanship Sully could've gotten his A320 back to Laguardia, so was landing in the Hudson ****-poor airmanship? After all, he destroyed an airplane. I see more gray out there than you do and it give me pause.

Which brings me to one final thought. There is also a human factors aspect of all of this. My personal experience is that there are a number of pilots with an extremely strong "internal locus of control". In their own estimation, they know exactly what the airplane will do, are excellent at reading the weather and always keep perfectly sufficient margins. Many (not all) of this personality type are hostile to feedback or thought that challenges that internal view. It's more than a handful of pilots I've encountered who, when confronted with feedback that they cut another pilot off in a thermal (or other similar behavior) responded with what amounted to "I'm fine - if you don't like it get out of my way". This, too, has given me pause, and in more than one case individuals have been encouraged to seek other forms of entertainment - particularly in the racing community. So, what happens to the pilot who is absolutely certain that his margins are good and he's read the weather right, configured the aircraft properly, etc. when a flying situation gets outside of their rock-solid belief system of what might happen? Do they go into denial or are they flexible in their view that they may have miscalculated something? Since many accidents are based on accumulations of decisions, the ability to re-estimate one's assumptions is a critical personality trait in breaking the potential accident chain.

Skill certainly counts, but so does attitude. It might be more humility than skill that saves your life.

Andy Blackburn
9B

On Friday, November 29, 2019 at 9:41:14 AM UTC-8, 2G wrote:

One point I will agree with you on is that you can't reduce all of your risks to zero - for example, if someone comes at you from your blind position with tunnel vision, it's damn hard to avoid a mid-air (it's happened to me, but I did avoid him). Nonetheless, the accident reports are replete with examples of ****-poor airmanship that are totally avoidable, including Masak's.

Tom


Andy,

I am getting the strong sense of deflection from my basic premise. First off, I am not talking about a complex airliner accident which involves a clear design error on the part of the manufacturer (Boeing). I know Boeing engineers, and they are saying that Boeing screwed up. To blame the pilots for this is far more than a stretch.

Second, the article I think you are referring to (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/12/b...sh-school.html) made no such claim. In fact, it lauds the Ethiopian flight school. It only mentioned the copilots flight time (200 hr), which is a matter of fact.

Third, trying to analyze the difference between 99.9% (1 in 1000) and 99.999% (1 in 100,000) is a fool's errand. In a good year, I might have 40 flights, 50 tops. 1 in 1000 means it will take forty to fifty years to occur, which MIGHT be once in my lifetime, at best. 1 in 100,000 means forget it: it's not important. I am talking about situations that have a reasonable chance of occurring on a flight, like 1 in 10 or 1 in 100. Take Masak's accident; as he was gliding toward the ridge line he had to see the ridge climbing on his canopy; what did he think the odds were of clearing the ridge, 1 in 2 if that? But he kept pressing on until he could see that he was BELOW the tree tops and had NO chance of clearing them. That delayed decision making process is why I categorize the accident cause as a CFIT; the stall/spin was merely a last second desperation maneuver with no chance of success. This accident was TOTALLY AVOIDABLE, yet it happened to a high-time, skilled pilot flying in a familiar area!

Other types of fatal avoidable accidents include hitting the only tree in field during a landout, flying IFR in the mountains and stall/spins in the pattern. Yes, all of these have occurred in the last two years to glider pilots, two to commercial pilots (one of those carrying a paying passenger).

I don't want to over-think things here - it actually is a pretty basic concept. If you have poor stick and rudder skills, or poor decision making skills, or both, you are an accident waiting to happen.

Tom


Actually, the following NYT article written by William Langewiesche (son of Wolfgang, the author of "Stick and Rudder") is highly critical of the 737 Max pilots and blames them for both crashes: "What we had in the two downed airplanes was a textbook failure of airmanship".
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/18/m...37-max-crashes.

In this context, "poor airmanship" seems like a blame the victim catch-all that can be applied in any accident.
  #77  
Old November 30th 19, 10:08 PM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
2G
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1,439
Default Put your money where the risk is

On Saturday, November 30, 2019 at 12:21:23 PM UTC-8, India November wrote:
On Friday, November 29, 2019 at 5:53:54 PM UTC-5, 2G wrote:
On Friday, November 29, 2019 at 12:44:05 PM UTC-8, Andy Blackburn wrote:
I think you have a much stronger sense that you are master of your destiny than many of us. I've certainly read the stall-spin stories of pilots in benign-handling trainers on a clear, windless day simply misjudging the turn to final by getting too low and ruddering the turn until they depart the airplane. It happens and it's about as close to 100% pilot error and poor airmanship as you can get. There are a number of those in the public record. I just think many cases are more complex than that and sit at the end of an accumulation of decisions where the pilot estimates wrong on which is the less-risky choice to make. I think this is particularly true if you are pushing for performance - you make risk-reward tradeoffs all the time and many of those are based on a sample of experience that is just insufficient for the range of situations that randomness can throw at you - but they work out 99.9% of the time - you just don't know if it's 99.9% or 99.999% and over time that matters.

Example: The Ethiopian 737MAX flight crew, faced with runaway trim and control forces too high to hold the nose up elected to re-engage the MCAS system to get electric trim back. It turned out not to help and lot of people died. It is possible that if they'd made the exact right choices at the exact right time they might've saved the aircraft, so is the fact that they failed '****-poor airmanship' or something more complex? They knew that MCAS-induced trim runaway was possible from the prior accident only weeks before. There was a much-criticized NYT op-ed that basically called the Ethiopian crew bad pilots. Most other experts said the situation was one that put so much stress on the crew that it's not reasonable to expect airmanship should be the correct solution to the problem, even if airmanship could've saved it. With perfect airmanship Sully could've gotten his A320 back to Laguardia, so was landing in the Hudson ****-poor airmanship? After all, he destroyed an airplane. I see more gray out there than you do and it give me pause.

Which brings me to one final thought. There is also a human factors aspect of all of this. My personal experience is that there are a number of pilots with an extremely strong "internal locus of control". In their own estimation, they know exactly what the airplane will do, are excellent at reading the weather and always keep perfectly sufficient margins. Many (not all) of this personality type are hostile to feedback or thought that challenges that internal view. It's more than a handful of pilots I've encountered who, when confronted with feedback that they cut another pilot off in a thermal (or other similar behavior) responded with what amounted to "I'm fine - if you don't like it get out of my way". This, too, has given me pause, and in more than one case individuals have been encouraged to seek other forms of entertainment - particularly in the racing community. So, what happens to the pilot who is absolutely certain that his margins are good and he's read the weather right, configured the aircraft properly, etc. when a flying situation gets outside of their rock-solid belief system of what might happen? Do they go into denial or are they flexible in their view that they may have miscalculated something? Since many accidents are based on accumulations of decisions, the ability to re-estimate one's assumptions is a critical personality trait in breaking the potential accident chain.

Skill certainly counts, but so does attitude. It might be more humility than skill that saves your life.

Andy Blackburn
9B

On Friday, November 29, 2019 at 9:41:14 AM UTC-8, 2G wrote:

One point I will agree with you on is that you can't reduce all of your risks to zero - for example, if someone comes at you from your blind position with tunnel vision, it's damn hard to avoid a mid-air (it's happened to me, but I did avoid him). Nonetheless, the accident reports are replete with examples of ****-poor airmanship that are totally avoidable, including Masak's.

Tom


Andy,

I am getting the strong sense of deflection from my basic premise. First off, I am not talking about a complex airliner accident which involves a clear design error on the part of the manufacturer (Boeing). I know Boeing engineers, and they are saying that Boeing screwed up. To blame the pilots for this is far more than a stretch.

Second, the article I think you are referring to (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/12/b...sh-school.html) made no such claim. In fact, it lauds the Ethiopian flight school. It only mentioned the copilots flight time (200 hr), which is a matter of fact.

Third, trying to analyze the difference between 99.9% (1 in 1000) and 99.999% (1 in 100,000) is a fool's errand. In a good year, I might have 40 flights, 50 tops. 1 in 1000 means it will take forty to fifty years to occur, which MIGHT be once in my lifetime, at best. 1 in 100,000 means forget it: it's not important. I am talking about situations that have a reasonable chance of occurring on a flight, like 1 in 10 or 1 in 100. Take Masak's accident; as he was gliding toward the ridge line he had to see the ridge climbing on his canopy; what did he think the odds were of clearing the ridge, 1 in 2 if that? But he kept pressing on until he could see that he was BELOW the tree tops and had NO chance of clearing them. That delayed decision making process is why I categorize the accident cause as a CFIT; the stall/spin was merely a last second desperation maneuver with no chance of success.. This accident was TOTALLY AVOIDABLE, yet it happened to a high-time, skilled pilot flying in a familiar area!

Other types of fatal avoidable accidents include hitting the only tree in field during a landout, flying IFR in the mountains and stall/spins in the pattern. Yes, all of these have occurred in the last two years to glider pilots, two to commercial pilots (one of those carrying a paying passenger).

I don't want to over-think things here - it actually is a pretty basic concept. If you have poor stick and rudder skills, or poor decision making skills, or both, you are an accident waiting to happen.

Tom


Actually, the following NYT article written by William Langewiesche (son of Wolfgang, the author of "Stick and Rudder") is highly critical of the 737 Max pilots and blames them for both crashes: "What we had in the two downed airplanes was a textbook failure of airmanship".
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/18/m...37-max-crashes.

In this context, "poor airmanship" seems like a blame the victim catch-all that can be applied in any accident.


Your link is broken, but I think this is the correct one:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/18/m...x-crashes.html

Again, these 737 Max crashes involved a malfunctioning critical attitude control system, MCAS, that gliders don't have. You should really discuss this in the appropriate forum such as misc.transport.air-industry. He does make a telling comment, however:

In my own flying life, each of the four trim runaways I have experienced has been at most a 10-second problem — eight seconds to be surprised, and two seconds to flip the electric trim off. Who could be confused? When I mentioned this to Larry Rockliff, a former Canadian military and Airbus test pilot, he shrugged me off. “Look,” he said, “we know as a fact that half of airline pilots graduated in the bottom half of their class.”

Tom

  #78  
Old November 30th 19, 10:20 PM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
Branko Stojkovic
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Posts: 42
Default Put your money where the risk is

I will answer your question right after you answer this one: do you think Masak made a bad decision(s) that cost him his life?

Tom


Tom,

Based on Tom Knauff's analysis of Peter Masak's fatal accident, I think it was most likely a poor decision that put him in situation in which his piloting skills could save him. Peter was flying in the 15m US nationals and was in a good position to win that day. Tom Knauff put it this way:

"He was obviously planning to fly to, and over Tussey ridge, into ridge lift and then south to a turnpoint. If he were successful, he would have been the only pilot to do so, and probably would have easily won the day. Only two other pilots flew to a nearby turnpoint, (Spruce Creek) and then returned towards the contest site."

Given the juicy reward that was waiting for him on the other side of Tussey ridge, I am guessing that Peter pushed his luck just a bit, reducing his safety margin. I am also guessing that 99 or 99.9 times out of a 100 he would have either made it over the ridge or would have been able to safely complete a 180° turn. I am also guessing that he encountered an unexpected sink and/or wind shear, which took away his diminished safety margin.

Would someone else in the same situation have been able to avoid stalling and made it out alive? Maybe, but I guess we'll never know for sure.

Branko
XYU
  #79  
Old November 30th 19, 10:56 PM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
Branko Stojkovic
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Posts: 42
Default Put your money where the risk is

On Saturday, November 30, 2019 at 10:32:36 AM UTC-8, Phil Plane wrote:
On Saturday, 30 November 2019 21:30:21 UTC+13, Branko Stojkovic wrote:

With regards to the stick-and-rudder skills, the matter is pretty straight forward. In general, there is a direct correlation/causation between the flying experience and the stick-and-rudder skill level, i.e., the beginners have limited skills and the experts have excellent skills. Furthermore, most pilots can fairly accurately assess their own stick-and-rudder skills. A yearly check ride with an instructor provides a useful feedback about the areas that need improvement.


Well I would take issue with that statement. I fly with a wide range of pilots from a wide range of backgrounds and have learned to be careful with generalisations.

I have flown with experienced competition pilots with thousands of hours who I would not be comfortable with in a tricky situation. I have flown with pilots who have barely finished their training with a few hundred hours who I wouldn't want to take control from for fear of embarrassing myself because they flew so precisely and correctly. I don't even try to guess in advance which is which any more. I wait for the evidence.

So I would suggest that good handling skills can be learned relatively quickly, but that they don't just get better with repetition. You need to actively try to improve.

Many 'experienced' pilots have been doing the same thing over an over and have embedded bad habits or lazy handling into their flying.

The biggest difference I see is many low time pilots know they haven't learned enough yet and want to get better.

When pilots just want to get by, they should probably think of moving to an activity that doesn't punish mistakes quite as hard.

Okay, so what about them decision-making skills, which also vary among the glider pilot population? It is safe to say that in this case there is a much weaker correlation between the flying experience and the skill level. It seems that the decision-making skills are much more related to the psychological makeup of the pilot and makes things much more complicated and causes several intractable problems.


This is the major factor. If you come up with a solution, let me know.

--
Phil Plane


Phil,

I totally agree with you because I have seen it for myself. That's why I started by saying "In general…". In any case, my main point was that the stick-and-rudder skills are much better understood and appreciated, and much easier to rate, than the soft skills of decision-making.

One important thing I didn't say in my post is this: Once your stick-and-rudder skills are good enough for you to fly solo, it is solely up to your decision making to keep you out of situations that would require higher piloting skills than the ones you possess. For that reason alone I would say that poor decision-making is the root cause of most accidents.

As for the solution, I can only tell you what worked for me. When I analyze my flying, I try to identify things that I am doing wrong, i.e., poor decisions that I've made. I also consider if my poor decision was a one-off, or if there may be a pattern. Lastly, and most importantly, I I try to figure out the reasons behind my making these types poor decisions.

For example, I made some poor decisions in the past because I am generally a nice guy who likes to please others. Luckily none of these resulted in an accident, but one came frighteningly close, and it was only my low altitude flying skills that saved my ass, the ass of the guy in my rear cockpit (who I was trying to please) and the asses of a couple of guys on the ground. I have since learned to recognize this pattern in my thinking and, for the most part, I have been successful in avoiding even minor safety infractions in order to please someone.

The most difficult part in this is looking at yourself with all of your shields down, warts and all. If this exercise doesn't make you uncomfortable, then you are not doing it right. Once you get better at it, it becomes much easier to admit to yourself and to other people that you have flaws. It also makes learning from other's mistakes and criticism much more effective.

Branko
XYU
  #80  
Old November 30th 19, 11:47 PM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
2G
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1,439
Default Put your money where the risk is

On Saturday, November 30, 2019 at 1:20:35 PM UTC-8, Branko Stojkovic wrote:
I will answer your question right after you answer this one: do you think Masak made a bad decision(s) that cost him his life?

Tom


Tom,

Based on Tom Knauff's analysis of Peter Masak's fatal accident, I think it was most likely a poor decision that put him in situation in which his piloting skills could save him. Peter was flying in the 15m US nationals and was in a good position to win that day. Tom Knauff put it this way:

"He was obviously planning to fly to, and over Tussey ridge, into ridge lift and then south to a turnpoint. If he were successful, he would have been the only pilot to do so, and probably would have easily won the day. Only two other pilots flew to a nearby turnpoint, (Spruce Creek) and then returned towards the contest site."

Given the juicy reward that was waiting for him on the other side of Tussey ridge, I am guessing that Peter pushed his luck just a bit, reducing his safety margin. I am also guessing that 99 or 99.9 times out of a 100 he would have either made it over the ridge or would have been able to safely complete a 180° turn. I am also guessing that he encountered an unexpected sink and/or wind shear, which took away his diminished safety margin.

Would someone else in the same situation have been able to avoid stalling and made it out alive? Maybe, but I guess we'll never know for sure.

Branko
XYU


Branko,

The answer is a definite yes. Anytime you landout there is the very real potential (1 in 10, not 1 in 100) of a mishap, and I have had such an incident. In fact, I listed it explicitly in this thread. Did you not see it?

Tom Knauff said Masak "pushed his luck." You will not find "luck" listed in any flight training manual, so Knauff must have meant something else. I personally listened to Knauff describe his world distance record flight he made. He related how himself and three other very experienced pilots were trying to make it the last stretch back to the Ridge Soaring. They all committed to flying into an area where they had no landing option; if they didn't find some lift, remember this the end of a very long day, they ALL would have landed in the trees. Nobody commented on this possibility on the radio, but they all were aware of it, yet they did it anyhow. Well, one of them found some lift and they all got away with it, and Knauff got his world record flight. He obviously "pushed his luck" beyond any reasonable limit. I am more blunt: he made a very bad decision and got away with it. Masak did the same thing, but didn't get away with it. By any measure, both incidents are examples of "****-poor airmanship" where an unsuccessful outcome results in death(s).

So, part of solution is to analyze your flight afterwards and identify any decision that is likely a poor one:
1. What factors led up to the poor decision.
2. What options did you reject that would have been a better choice.
3. How you can change your future decision making to prevent a re-occurrence.
We all make bad decisions - the better pilots learn from them so as not to repeat them.

Tom
 




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