On Sep 3, 12:27*pm, Mike Schumann
The commuter plane that crashed in Buffalo last year had a stick shaker
and it didn't seem to help them. *More gadgets won't compensate for a
lack of basic airmanship.

True, but the point of the "gadgets" as you call them is to attract
attention to a condition so that the pilot can apply basic airmanship
and save the day (and his life).

Just saying "gadgets wont help" is like saying "ban all low passes" -
it totally ignores the fact that stick shakers have in the past and
will continue in the future save many lives - and that low passes are
done all the time in perfect safety by careful pilots without any
problem, while other pilots continue to crash while attempting a
simple landing.

I agree, though, that at the bottom of all this (and to our appalling
safety record in soaring) lies an amazing lack of discipline and
"airmanship" in our glider pilot population, coupled with what I
consider a haphazard system of instruction - good individual
instructors hampered by a lack of standardization, etc...

Kirk
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