It's beginning to seem like common practice to have multiple accidents
at glider contests these days. I really hate to see accidents get
hushed up, nothing mentioned on the contest report, except for a
simple "W" and "F" next to the persons score. We can all learn from
these accidents, why hide them? Why not make changes to avoid these
from recurring. Anyone who flies contests knows they aren't immune
from accidents.

After reading the debate between 80 miles of unlandable terrain at
Logan, I looked over the turnpoint list on google earth. I noticed
there are large number of turnpoints that are Mountain Peaks. Years
ago when camera's were required to take a picture of an easily
identifiable turnpiont, a Mountain Peak might have been a good
turnpoint. But now in the age of GPS's, we don't so much need an
easily identifiable turnpoint. Especially when we are flying into a
big turn cylinder. And besides, nobody needs glide navigation
information into the top of a mountain.

A contest I flew in a few years ago, had a river as a turnpoint. A
local pilot showed me on google earth a perfect field two miles away
from the river. Why not have this perfect field as a turnpoint?
Wouldn't it be nicer to have distance, direction and glide navigation
information into this perfect field rather than the river?

Another task I flew had no turnpoints listed between the final turn
point and the finish cylinder which was 18 miles. There was no
obvious places to land, except for one hidden grass runway that was
kept mowed. I landedat this hidden grass runway in a Piper Cub a
couple days later. Why wasn't this listed into the turnpoint
database?

I know that the contest committee reads this and it would sure be
great if there could be a push for revamping the turnpoint database to
include excellent places to land and remove turnpoints that don't help
you when you get low.


I love this sport very much, and I would sure hate to see more
accidents cause the participation rate to dwindle down even more. Why
don't we overhaul our turnpoint databases to improve safety???