On 9/8/2013 7:11 AM, wrote:

This is a beautiful story..right up to the last two paragraphs. Read those
again, carefully

"At the awards ceremony, he added that he was going to do a straight in to
the ground, options permitting, but he was NOT going to quit. He intended
to leave nothing "in the cockpit" so to speak. He was trying to make the
field. Runway 18 has some powerlines on its northern approach, and a
barbed-wire fence not far beyond. He figured he could safely make it UNDER
the powerlines...but wasn't certain he could make it OVER the fence. He
landed. He said it was the roughest 1-26 landing he'd ever made. And that's
saying something from a man who probably has well over a hundred off-field
landings in a 1-26, many of them on dirt roads.

He said that after all the banging and bumping stopped, and after all the
dust had cleared away, and after he could see his flight computer, it
showed he'd come to a stop barely within the finish circle! Under the 1-26
rules he would be scored with speed points!! He said he didn't care at that
moment if he had lost, he knew he'd done his and the day's best. That's
what competition - and life - is all about. Doing your best.

Harry Baldwin. Champion of champions."


Really now? I spent most of this season enduring tongue lashings about our
finish rules. "No sane pilot will push a final glide, just because of some
point system," they said. "Experienced pilots will always give up and do a
proper landout with at least 500 feet left" they said. "Pilots aren't doing
stupid things just because of rules" they said.

Then read this story. You can't ask for more experience!

"he was going to do a straight in to the ground"

I.e., Not only did he get tempted at the last moment, he planned to do it!

"He figured he could safely make it UNDER the powerlines...but wasn't
certain he could make it OVER the fence."

"showed he'd come to a stop barely within the finish circle! Under the
1-26 rules he would be scored with speed points!!"

You can't ask for a clearer example of finish rules inducing amazingly
stupid behavior.

For let's call it what it is, this is amazingly stupid behavior. A straight
in approach, to a high desert site, planned under power lines with a barbed
wire fence approaching? Even at 20:1 it's pretty hard to see what's ahead.

What would you all have been saying if this had gone badly, as it had every
right to do, and Harry hit one of those wires, or there had been a boulder,
unseen from a straight in glide, on his landing. Would the story still have
been "there goes a top pilot, doing just the right thing, a victim of
unfortunate and unforeseeable circumstance?"

Or would the story have been the usual chorus of denial: "Well, he must
have been dehydrated." "You know, pilots that age..." "What a bozo
maneuver. Surely great pilots like me would never do such a thing." "Well,
whatever was on his mind, the 126 rules that give speed points for a
landout a mile from the airport can't have been it." Fortunately he
survived to tell us that was exactly what was on his mind.

But most of all, this isn't about Harry. We've all done dumb things. And
sometimes been silly enough to boast of them at the pilot's meeting the
next day. This is about the rest of us. We glorify this??? This is the
story we want to pass on to our young impressionable pilots? "Wow, this is
how real champions do it?" "Keep this story in mind when you're making
tough in flight decisions?"

No, I'm sorry. In this case, not champion of champions. In this case, one
really lucky guy, who did something amazingly dumb, and thanks to the low
energy of the 1-26 got away with it.

Dear Danny and other promising new contest pilots: This is NOT how contest
flying is done. When the rules of your contest allow you to earn hundreds
of points and win the day by doing something incredibly dumb, like a Mc 0
glide straight in, under a powerline, heading toward a barbed wire fence,
to roll just into a finish cylinder dodging mesquite and boulders, you do
NOT do it. You land out, from a comfortable altitude, over a field you can
see, and live to fly again next year. Don't thermal at 200 feet either. We
want you to still be flying when you're 84.

John Cochrane BB


I knew "this was coming" when I wrote the piece. Every sentence, tale,
adventure has at least as many perspectives as there are listeners...and in my
case, I bring multiple perspectives to my assessments of anything. I doubt the
"multiple perspectives" thing is peculiar only to me.

I also have no problem reconciling "perspective conflict"...at least my own.
Those things noted...

Without being tedious covering them individually, John Cochrane's points
concerning the risks Harry Baldwin was prepared to take (and did, up to a very
low margin point), are spot on. However, that does NOT mean what Harry did was
outright dumb. Imponderables matter, a whole lot when lives are at stake. Few
parents would let their 16-year-old boy drive the family Ferrari on the race
track the day after their baby is licensed (meaning the kid, not the car :-)),
while many would have far fewer qualms about letting (say) Helio Castroneves
or Sebastian Vettel do so.

Experience, judgment, currency, etc., etc., etc., matter. A lot. If anyone
wishes to snipe about Harry's age, let's not stop there, let's go right to the
question of "self-certification." Who doesn't know people in (say) their 50's
who shouldn't be behind the wheel of a car for mental and/or physical reasons?
There's only a VERY loose correlation between chronological age and
mental/physical competency.

Paul Newman (remember him?) raced (high-powered) cars at the national level
(winning SCCA national championships well into his later 60's as I recall).
Harry Baldwin is a vastly experienced 1-26 pilot: cross-country, national
level competitions, off-field landings, the Moriarty area. In the two weeks
prior to the Race of Champions, his local knowledge of the field and its
approaches had been daily updated and honed. So far as I can tell from
"Soaring" magazine, he's lived and flown his entire adult life from a base in
San Diego, which is surrounded by far harsher desert than surrounds Moriarty.
The man surely should well know the desert landing risks he was prepared to
accept, and the margins he was prepared to - and did - thin.

So John Cochrane and I seem to be in complete agreement that, "[...] most of
all, this isn't about Harry."

Where I begin to quibble with John are some aspects of succeeding statements.
"We've all done dumb things. And sometimes been silly enough to boast of them
at the pilot's meeting the next day..."

Firstly, What Harry chose to do is not definitionally dumb..."dumb" as in the
outcome was predictably/almost certainly/likely doomed to end poorly. That's
how I define dumb. What Harry chose to do WAS higher risk than entering a
pattern from (say) 800' agl. And it (arguably) got higher risk as he
descended, though the "obvious to the rest of us pilots" risks are closely
coupled to the landing options toward which he was descending. Having "camp
flown" gliders from Moriarty myself between the early 1990s and 2009, and
having XC soared "out west" from 1974, I always actively strove to never make
a prairie landing (which option was a large portion of Harry's options as he
descended below 800' agl). That's just me. I've probably retrieved
double-digits' worth of folks from western prairies and grasslands, ship types
ranging from 1-26s to racing glass. Fortunately no ship damage on any of my
retrieves...but *I* was never comfortable with the risks. Some of the pilots
I've retrieved I considered good candidates for breaking their glass ships
(and some of those subsequently did, despite whatever input they received from
reading, fellow pilots, me, etc.). Others I understood their landing risk
tolerance simply differed from mine, though they DID understand the risks
associated with prairie landings. My working guess is Harry Baldwin easily
falls into the second category, and, the 1-26 for many reasons is far more
resistant to OFL damage than many newer ships.

Secondly, to me there's a HUGE difference between boasting and simply
answering a question. I got zero sense Harry was boasting when he synopsized
for me and my pilot in the breakfast nook prior to that morning's group
gathering, how he'd come to be on the prairie short of runway 18's paved
threshold. Likewise, at the later group gathering, he seemed to me to be
simply answering the natural curiosity-based questions put to him. My sense
was that he fully understood the risks he'd been prepared to/did take, but
maybe that's only my individual perspective. Undoubtedly "the Kid's"
perspective would be different for a whole host of reasons. Whose is "right?"
My answer is all perspectives are right so long as risks are well comprehended
and sensibly factored into the individuals' future actions. (And, yes, I
recognize that "the learning venue/scenario" matters a LOT. A pilot's meeting
is a far poorer venue for nuanced learning than is [say] a classroom...but the
unavoidable fact is learning takes place everywhere.)

To continue with some of John Cochrane's (entirely valid) points...

"[...] This is about the rest of us. We glorify this??? This is the story we
want to pass on to our young impressionable pilots? 'Wow, this is how real
champions do it?' 'Keep this story in mind when you're making tough in flight
decisions?' "

Every pilot in the room when Harry Baldwin was asked to share how he'd come to
wind up on the prairie barely short of R18 was "a thoroughly experienced XC
sailplane pilot." Only "the Kid" (19 years old) was not "a legal adult." The
next youngest was "my pilot", a 28-year-old CFI, CFI-G, ATP (and likely more
acronyms of which I'm ignorant), with more OFLs in ~5 years of soaring than I
have in 50 years. So far, I'm the only one of us two to've damaged a sailplane
in an OFL...dirt clods poked 2 small holes in the nose fabric of my 1-26 on my
4th-ever OFL when I ignorantly landed in a plowed-only field. (Never made THAT
mistake again.) My point here is, context matters. And John Cochrane is right
that the RAS context is worlds apart from Moriarty's little enclave.

Were we to take a straw poll of whether RASidents would vote for total
exclusion of interesting, potentially valuable stories containing much food
for thought for every soaring pilot, vs. the alternative of not exposing
future soaring pilots to learning opportunities on RAS via this route, I know
which voting outcome I'd bet my retirement wad on. That said, and...

....in no way trying to be contentious, there is one area in which I suspect
John Cochrane and I are presently going to have to agree to disagree. Quoting
John again, "No, I'm sorry. In this case, not champion of champions. In this
case, one really lucky guy, who did something amazingly dumb, and thanks to
the low energy of the 1-26 got away with it." Taking the quote at face value
(always fraught with potential inaccuracy in a written settng as is RAS), I
agree Harry Baldwin was fortunate that his prairie landing worked out (as
previously noted, I believe EVERY pilot who makes a prairie landing without
plane damage is fortunate). I DISagree that Harry's thought process was a
concatenation of dumb thinking. I agree the 1-26 is perhaps the best ship in
common U.S. usage for any pilot to safely (for ship and pilot) learn the
nuances of OFLs.

Now reread John's closing paragraph. (I'll wait...:-))



Contest rules certainly do influence pilot decisions. That's human nature. And
"I feel John's pain" when it comes to the thankless, painful, task of being on
a rules committee, trying to define rules "100% acceptable to all viewpoints."
It can't be done. That said, I'd bet both of us are in complete agreement that
some rules "tend to promote safer behavior than other rules." Discussing THAT
will be done so long as humans are around to invent sporting
competitions...and is why John's felt much of his own pain in recent years!

My original post was an attempt to share with a larger audience a tale
containing considerable human drama. (Heck, I'm an anal engineer by
inclination and training, and *I* found the day's events compelling!) It was
as accurately written as I'm capable, did not indulge in inaccurate hyperbole
for effect, and did not seek to "glorify stupidity." I appreciate John
Cochrane's willingness to broach topics only (indirectly) hinted at in the
article, i.e. pilot decision making, rules incentives, "fundamental safety,"
etc., because these topics are an integral, fundamental part of my, John's,
Harry Baldwin's, readers', soaring avocation. I hope most readers can
appreciate the story and the lessons within it that are applicable to their
own safe flying, because what's *Really* Dumb to me is failure to learn from
others.

Respectfully,
Bob W.