On 6/17/2010 3:07 PM, Mike the Strike wrote:
Some facts that might temper some of the speculation he

The collision happened about 75 miles north of Parowan over
mountainous terrain. This area is very low population and the risk to
people or structures on the ground was minimal. The nearest airport,
Fillmore, has been under construction and its status was unknown to
the pilots.
There is no NOTAM for Fillmore, and all the pilots in the contest should
have known that.

The next nearest airport with a decent runway was Beaver,
which is only 20 miles or so north of Parowan.
Beaver is 23 NM/26 miles from Parowan. From the approxiamate location of
the collision you describe, Richfield is 10 NM; Salina is 23 NM;
Junction is 36; Delta is 33 NM; Beaver is 43 NM; Milford is 44 NM.
These are all paved municipal airports with 4 having 75+ wide runways,
the others 60 feet wide; one is 4500 long (Parowan if 5000') and the
others are greater than 5000'. So, plenty of closer airports with good
runways.

If I had been flying
south with a damaged but controllable glider, I probably would also
have opted to keep on to Parowan, as the ASH 26 did. (He calculated
that he had lost about 15% of performance and could still thermal
reasonably well.) There were many more people at Parowan (Beaver is
usually deserted) and much more chance of getting rapid assistance in
the event of a landing problem.


I agree there would be lot more people at Parowan than these other
airports, and perhaps closer to the biggest hospital. Of course, if it's
the hospital you worry about, you should fly past Parowan and land at
Cedar City!

One strategy would be to contact contest ground and have them arrange
for emergency help to be at another airport, or even use 121.5 to
declare an emergency to ensure help arrived at the airport of choice. I
suspect an ambulance could arrive at any of them before it was necessary
to land there.

So, I think we are still left with the question: why did the pilot
choose to fly to Parowan with all these other, closer options? My best
guess is I would have opted for Parowan if the glider seemed stable,
controllable, and "obviously" able to make it to Parowan, but sitting
here, thinking it through, it doesn't seem as good an idea as landing
after arranging for help.

--
Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA (netto to net to email me)

- "Transponders in Sailplanes - Feb/2010" also ADS-B, PCAS, Flarm http://tinyurl.com/yb3xywl

- "A Guide to Self-launching Sailplane Operation Mar/2004" Much of what you need to know tinyurl.com/yfs7tnz