At 17:24 28 January 2004, Ian Johnston wrote:
On Wed, 28 Jan 2004 15:01:49 UTC, Tony Verhulst
wrote:

: Arnold Pieper wrote:
: Repeating someone who wrote this earlier in the
week :
: 'Sure, we should stop training landings as well
because that's where the
: majority of the accidents happen.'
:
: Bad analogy. The difference is that you HAVE to land.

Should simulated cable breaks be taught, or should
pupils just be
taught to recognize the symptoms of a cable break
and be taken up in
a special glider a couple of times as they near first
solo to
practice. I've never had a real cable break, myself,
so I know it's
not going to happen to me ...

Ian

To reinforce what Ian just said. Perhaps we ought to
consider the consequences of not training full spin
recovery. When someone who has not been so trained
has the ground do the spin recovery for them, their
estate will sue the training organisation for negligence
in not training to recover from a mode of flight which
is well known to be fatal if not correctly recovered
from. You can't just teach people to recite the spin
recovery, it has to be practiced at altitude in a glider
or it won't get properly applied when needed.

Also, you might consider that the reason large numbers
of pilots of high performance sailplanes are not hitting
the ground spinning is precisely because they have
had spin avoidance and recovery training.