On 28 Jan 2004 01:36:38 GMT, "Ian Johnston"
wrote:

On Tue, 27 Jan 2004 22:14:22 UTC, Mike Borgelt
wrote:

: It is called risk management. They fly gliders to go soaring not to do
: aerobatics. Most of them have thousands of hours of flying cross
: country and in competition. They consider it far riskier to do spins
: in gliders of uncertain history with instructors of little experience
: and training who typically seem to them to demonstrate dangerous
: overconfidence.

Ho yes. All good excuses. They should get their checks with
instructors they trust in gliders they trust.

How do you do this?
The good two seaters are in private hands and not available and some
of them are placarded against deliberate spins. That leaves you with
club heaps subject to unknown history , amateur maintenance and
unknown numbers of 20 cent pieces under the seats amonst the control
system. The instructors all have their GFA ratings. The system does
nothing to weed out the incompetent even when they demonstrate their
incompetence. We had one instructor 3 years ago spin a Puch in from
low altitude while thermalling with a student because the instructor
got out of glide range of the airfield and wishing to avoid derigging
(the tug was a hired one not to be used for field retrieves) took over
and tried to thermal away. Two serious injuries. They must be one of
the few Puch spin ins where both survived.
The instructor had been the Chief Flying Instructor of that Club in
recent history.

: And they won't spin down on you from above.

If that blithe confidence is misplaced, though, will they be able to
stop spinning?


The "blithe confidence" is based on thousands of hours where this
hasn't happened. Unlike the blithe confidence displayed by some that
they will always manage to recover from spinning Puchaczs despite the
growing evidence to the contrary.

Though it's not really the reluctance about spinning which gets me -
it's the general nervousness about flyng skills which it reveals.

If you aren't a little nervous before takeoff maybe you don't really
understand the problem. You are less than 60 seconds away from
perhaps having to demonstrate that you are mentally prepared and
skilled enough to cope with a low altitude emergency. I don't know
about you but this always gets my attention.

: Some of the attitudes revealed in this thread make me despair that
: anything will ever happen to improve the soaring safety record.

I agree with you there.

Ian

I really don't care whether you or Arnold Pieper or anyone else spin
Puch's or not as long as nobody is coerced into doing so.
There is a perfectly defensible position that says repeated full spin
demonstrations are unnecessary.

We aren't going to improve flight safety by continuing the "tick the
box" mentality that annual checks encourage. The BGA and GFA records
speak for themselves.

Mike Borgelt