Earlier, "Bill Daniels" bildan@comcast-dot-net wrote:

I think what this is down to is that BRS that would work in the majority of
imaginable situations would be too heavy, too complicated, and too
expensive for wide acceptance.

I think that might be a bit on the pessimistic side. There's excellent
coverage for light sailplanes from light, simple, and affordable BRS
systems currently available. The problem comes when you try to scale
it up and cover large gliders, racers, 2-seaters, and massive stuff
like that. For example, my old HP-11 would be a pervect candidate:
Fairly light yet robust, with a nice big chunk of empty volume right
behind the wing spar.

One good thing that came out of the Owl incident was that it points
the way towards an interesting alternative: Instead of protecting the
whole aircraft and pilot, how about protecting just the seat pan and
pilot? The seat pan could be mounted on a rail, with the pilot belted
to the seat pan. The BRS deployment could mechanically unlatch the
canopy and seat pan, and extract the pilot and seat pan from the
forward fuselage. Heck, you could even take your expensive instruments
with you!

I recall that one of the Akafliegs was working on a system like that
called (I think) SOTIERA or something like that. But that was a long
time ago, before BRS systems were as common as they are now. It was
comprised of a lot of expensive custom components. These days such a
system might be built or customized from commercially-available BRS
elements.

Thanks, Bob K.