Eric Greenwell wrote:
KM wrote:
Brian wrote:

You are misreading my statements - I did not admit nor imply anything
like that.

Yes I did, sorry about that.

You mean the domes and stuff? I think some of those things could improve
the visual discovery by an aircrew, but think getting any of it into
these planes is most unlikely. That doesn't make it BS - he states it's
his opinion. He clearly thinks pilots going so fast they can't clear
their path should do more to avoid problems. You might not agree, but
that still doesn't make it BS. Naive, maybe; BS, no.

Not just the domes Eric.It was pretty much the whole thing.The fact
that he started analizing an airline crash was very irritating and he
didnt need to place blame either.This stuff is clearly outside the
scope of Soaring magazine.I think that readers should understand that a
small plane is VERY hard to see soon enough to do anything about at 300
KTS. Another thing is turn that transponder ON and the jet WILL pick
you up at least 20 miles away.

George's column is there every month, but it is not the only
"opportunity" for safety content in the magazine: currently, the Soaring
Safety Foundation is running a series on safety, and there are other
articles on safety during the year. The November issue had an article by
Knauff, for example.

So true, but from what I have seen in the few years I have been reading
Soaring, his is the only one that deals with accident
investigations.This is where I think his conclusions need to be more
consistent with the facts so that the average reader can learn
something and prevent a future problem.

Still, there are other ways to do a safety column. One that might
satisfy your complaints and still yield an interesting column and not a
clone of a (yawn) NTSB report would be a team of 2 or 3 pilots writing
the column. Ideally, they'd have quite different backgrounds and soaring
experiences, so more factors would be examined and more knowledge put
into it than any one writer could manage.

Having a team would reduce the work each had to do. The actual writing
could be by all three, or individually, or a mix of group and
individually written columns. By operating it as a team and not just 2
or 3 pilots writing a column alternately, the column could be consistent
in approach, avoiding conflicting recommendations.

What does KM think about this idea? What does RAS think about this
approach? How is it handled by other countries?

I think it is a great idea.Depending on lead times and such I might not
be able to help out on a consistant basis but I am all for it.