On 2/18/04 6:38 PM, in article ,
"plasticguy" wrote:

Off field landings...are not technically emergencies.

Cite?

There is plenty in soaring to be technical about, but aren't we really
dealing here with a state of mind?


They are unplanned events...

They are premeditated. They should be, and are, planned-for. They are not
necessarily intended.


...they do not carry the imminent risk of injury, loss of life or
the other things emergencies use for definition.

The closer you get to landing the more of an emergency a landout is. It is
not necessary in any other type of aviation activity with which I am
familiar to see injury or loss of life as imminent before one is encouraged
to declare an emergency. The point of categorizing a particular situation as
an emergency is most often as a proactive measure in order to avoid
imminence. Perhaps in contradiction of any unexamined expectations, I think
it is reasonable to say that a landout by a ranked competitor in a fast,
heavy, many-meter ship may be as dangerous, and as much an emergency, as an
A-Badger struggling into the same field in a 2-33.


...the use of trailers and the use of a recovery crew
seem to indicate that it is an expected outcome.

....to the same extent that the provision of fire fighting equipment and
emergency medical teams at airline airports indicate that there is an
expectation they will be needed. The presence of mechanics with tools at
most airports is an indication that mechanical failures will occur. That
does not bar many types of failures from being considered emergency
conditions.


I wouldn't go there if I didn't need to.

With that I can agree wholeheartedly. Describing the average landout as an
emergency procedure might not be healthy for the sport, neither in a public
relations sense, in a regulatory sense, nor in the cause of recruiting new
participants.

Nonetheless, landouts are the closest thing I know of in soaring to the
number and variety of emergencies in other realms of aviation of which I
have first hand knowledge.

One has limited time, limited resources, and a more or less rapidly closing
window of opportunity for a successful outcome. Everywhere else in aviation,
that is enough to encourage crew members to assume an emergency condition
mindset, whether in order to avail themselves of assistance or just to
diminish the threat to themselves and others.

If the idea of being in an emergency condition from the time we leave for
the airport until the time we put on our slippers and light our pipes at the
end of the day is somewhat unsettling, then that may indicate a certain lack
of acceptance of the realities.

In soaring there are only three, after all. ;



Jack