John Sinclair wrote:
Say, JJ, did they point you at the range and tell you,
'here's some 20mm and
some little blue bombs -- now go do what you've seen
in the films'? Or did
they give you a bunch of dual training, good briefs
and debriefs, and lots
of practice?

Minimum 'foul' altitudes were established for range
work. Before that, jocks were flying into the ground.
Under my proposal, your minimum 'foul' altitude would
be 500 feet.

Are we ignoring training while trying to legislate
safety?

Come on, we can't even get the assembly check into
the rules and you want to establish a low altitude
/ high speed training school? Charlie has a way to
make pilots do their assembly checks, he announces
the names of all those who didn't do it the day before.
Guess what, the next day everybody is in compliance.
We don't have any authority over our pilots, thats
the problem.
JJ

Assembly check has been very effectively enforced by many contest
organisers with the simple policy of "no signiture on the wing tape- no
tow".
As to proposal by another to require training in low finishes, I'll be
curious if he is willing to teach this school and sign off pilots. I,
for one will not be doing this. Imagine the potential liability.
We continuously do recurrent training at contests in the form of safety
talks.
Others of us also counsel pilots who are seen doing marginal finishes
in order to try to prevent accidents.
All that said, I love to do speed finishes, am sorry to see them on the
way out, but think their time has come and gone.
UH