On Monday, October 28, 2019 at 10:07:26 AM UTC-4, John Cochrane wrote:
Glider damage is less severe than people damage, and we are fortunate that the ratio of people damaged glide damage is so low.


Another good point, John. We talk about whether competition soaring is "risky", often in a general sense. But there are different types of risk. Start line/cylinder risk deserves its own discussion (e.g., high-speed plunges vs. gaggles milling around with the dive brakes open to remain below the top for 2 min.). And I'll refrain from re-opening the finish line vs. finish cylinder debate out of respect.

Landout risk is real. I've only incurred damage once landing off the airport but I bought a new landing gear on a sailplane that was just over a year old so I was kind of unhappy. Actually, AIG paid for the landing gear but the effect is similar long term. In any case, having landed out 100+ times over the years, I'm well aware of the risk of glider damage and prefer to avoid it these days if possible. We old timers talk pretty casually (as I am now) about all the crazy places we've landed but the advent of the airport landing bonus and higher task completion ratios has been good for the mainstream of our sport, I think.

But that's usually just money: deductibles, higher premiums for an individual, and higher rates for all. As you point out, the possibility of being injured in a landout is much lower but not zero. Wire strikes are always a threat and I know of at least one fatality and one very serious injury. The risk of stall/spin while going into a field is probably higher than when around the home airport but I don't have the data to prove it. When I clobbered the landing gear on my brand new ASW 24, Gerhard Waibel's wonderful design kept the wheel/tire jammed against the bottom of the fuselage when the trailing arms failed--as intended--in compression and that, in turn, kept the fuselage above the second rock, which would have punctured the belly much more deeply and possibly done damage to my spine. I've had several friends seriously injured in crashes involving landing out.

I do think the risk of injury is higher in gaggles than in landing out but, again, I have no data to prove it. Regardless, anything we do that increases gaggling risk AND landout risk without commensurate benefits seems ill advised.

I don't like most MAT tasks (e.g., one turn and go anywhere you want) but the CD used the "long" (a relative term) MAT at the Caesar Creek Nationals this summer to squeeze a day out of miserably weak weather so I'm on board in that situation. Fortunately (?), we only had 8 contestants in Standard Class and 9 in Sports Class so the gaggling risk was less than around some club operations. Hey, do the FAI Rules advocates realize that if higher landouts reduce the entry lists, that they'll get less practice in gaggle flying, thus negating any advantage of adopting the Rules in the first place? Kind of like confiscatory tax rates on the wealthy driving out well-to-do residents and their tax revenues. Or maybe I digress.

Chip Bearden
JB