Michael, your perception of my post is so off base as to be
irrelevant. Go reread my posts with an open mind and try to fathom
whay I was saying.

Ron Lee



(Michael Houghton) wrote:

Howdy!

In article ,
Ron Lee wrote:
(Rick Durden) wrote:

Ron,

It's interesting to read of your anti-safety perspective...the
approach that if a pilot errs, he is sentenced to death.

Rick, you completely missed my point. I am hardly "anti-safety." I
am opposed to potential crutches that allow poor flight decisions to
be rectified by "pulling the handle."

It is very difficult to reconcile those two sentences, and you fail to
do so.

You use pejorative terms to describe the use of the safety system for
the things it was designed specifically for (and delivered on).
You harp on the pilot's culpability.

To suggest that any error means death is unsupportable and a gross
mischaracterization of reality. We don't know that either of these
two events would have been fatal and certainly we do not know that a
series of mistakes led to "pulling the handle." Better to concentrate
on better decision skills than equipping all GA aircraft with a
parachute.

You suggest, by your choice of words, that the pilots in both cases
had no business pulling the handle -- that their decision making skills
were somehow defective.

If you are in IMC at low altitude and you have instruments going haywire,
you have a situation that can turn deadly in an instant, with no room
to recover. You weren't in that airplane. You cannot judge that pilot's
choice the way you are. You have no specific knowledge (any more than the
rest of us) of what was actually happening.

Reread Rick Durden's words about the adoption of parachutes in the
military and observe how your words mimic the attude that had to be
overcome then.

I will be the first to admit that I am not the best pilot. But I will
compare my decision making with any other pilot and come out quite
well.

I'm afraid that your words suggest a different evaluation. You demean
the use of safety devices that have been empirically shown to work in
the field -- devices that you are not being forced to use.

yours,
Michael


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