On Feb 21, 12:30*pm, wrote:
On Feb 21, 6:47*am, JJ Sinclair wrote:





Oh my, I don't know where to start with this, so lets start with a
little history; Johnny Robinson won 2 nationals in his Zanonia because
he had a gyro and tought himself to fly in clouds (like CB's). Little
wonder he won because he was venturing out at 20,000 feet when
everyone else was trying it at 6000. About the same time (1940's) one
could see pieces of sailplanes raining down from the bottom of CB's
because 2 ships had run into each other OR one had iced up and come
screamind down OR the pilot had become disoriented and pulled the
wings off. Well guess what? The rules committee came up with the rule
that said no gyros will be allowed. The question has been asked, why
not just make cloud flying illegal? Like putting that in the rules
would do anything. How is the CD supposed to know if old Johnny had
been doing some 'illligal' activities? Don't kid yourself, we have
those who would get an extra 1000 feet or so if they could safely
continue on up into a Q, then come out the side a bit higher than the
rest of us. We're all quite observant and if Johhny's getting away
with it, believe I'll try it too and soon we're right back to pieces
of sailplanes raining out of clouds.

I too recall stories of world championships that allowed use of gyros
(we are way off topic now - but it's interesting so I'll go with it).
There were accounts of multiple gliders climbing up into cu and mostly
parts coming out. Allowing gyros for use to enable cloud flying is a
very bad idea...

...but the issue here is a bit different. Specifically, should the
rules allow a sealed T&B for emergency use only, where breaking the
seal would result is being disqualified for the day, the contest,
something substantial? *Chip's GPS analogy is instructive in that
there are in my observation many more low final glides now than there
were 20 years ago. But GPS also has big safety benefits in uses that
don't encourage risky behavior. Allowing emergency T&B seems dodgy to
me as I wonder whether there are many circumstances where a pilot
would choose to break the seal and take the DQ prior to getting so
hoplessly disoriented that the T&B wouldn't spin up in a state that it
could help. That is, wouldn't (s)he try to get out of trouble without
breaking out the T&B under most circumstances?

It does make me wonder how many pilots have used GPS to climb into
cloud in a straight line to get an extra few thousand feet or so. It's
certainly possible.

9B- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

The intention of leaving T&B in place is not to use it as a safety
device during competition but rather in wave flying outside a
contest.

The question is how to disable it for a competition?