"Stewart Kissel" wrote in
message ...
At 03:30 29 April 2005, Dudley Henriques wrote:

Snip------

Somewhere in my aviation library is a quote that can
be summarized as...'Showing off with an aircraft is
a good way to get killed'.

I use that theme combined with the fact that nothing
we do in gliders is worth risking our lives unnecesarily
for...

And no, that does not meant we don't go fly....and
take acceptable risks...


Good point. Any advice to "never take risks" is likely to be ignored under
some circumstances. "Never take stupid risks" is more likely to be
acceptable.

When confronted with a situation involving risks, I try to do a quick
"upside/downside" analysis. This is a sort of. "What do I gain if this
works?" vs. "What do I lose if it doesn't?" Since gliding is a sport, it's
hard to see this analysis supporting much risk except, perhaps, for a pilot
two points out of first place in a national contest on the last day.

Over the years I have lost a number of friends and acquaintances to glider
aerobatics. This leads me to the view that glider aerobatics is usually a
"stupid risk" since it rarely passes the "upside/downside" analysis. For
me, an adrenaline rush is not a reward but punishment for a mistake. I try
to avoid it.

It's possibly worth adding that risks appear differently to pilots with
different levels of experience and in different situations. I was once
criticized for an XC over what appeared to the critic as unlandable terrain.
What he didn't know was that I had previously carefully surveyed the terrain
in question by car and found several safe landing areas and noted their GPS
coordinates. I was always in gliding range to a safe landing area although
it appeared otherwise to this critic.

Or, possibly, he regarded paved airports as the only safe landing areas.
This seems to have become a widely held opinion. Off-airport landings seem
to hold a horror for many pilots these days even though they can be much
more convenient and less hassle than many airports where gliders are
regarded as a nuisance.

Bill Daniels