How does a Comp pilot think ? You can lose points spending 1/2 an hour
struggling and then landing. Time points are important. Find a safe field
as far down track as you can and land, stopping the clock, better points,
less tired, and back for the next day. I've lost points to pilots who
didn't try so hard because time points I've also lost a day fixing the ship
because I put it in the wrong field. If the days over unless that last
climb is going to get you home, stick it in a good field ASAP it's the best
points you will get. Once you have that in your head it's easier to
rationalise ignoring that 1/2knot at 700 ft . This assumes the comp is
based on time and distance.

No question "tactical thinking" affects contest scores, such "potential
effects" existing probably regardless of the set of rules under which Joe
Pilot competes.

The "type of pilot thinking" I had in mind when starting this thread was less
"contest tactical" and more "thinking as it affects Joe Sailplane Pilot's
potential for continuing existence." It's something that's long intrigued
me...might Joe S. Pilot's thought processes have a fundamental effect on his
potential for damaging glider/self to where he can't fly the same plane
tomorrow? (Hey, if George Moffat could be intrigued by pilot psychology as it
affected contests, I figure "psychology as it affects future existence" isn't
that big a stretch. Besides, I always wanted to use "George Moffat" and "I" in
the same sentence!)

I have in mind "Joe Average" Sailplane (J.A.S.) Pilot, soaring for fun on a
"routine sailplane flight" in which s/he expects to routinely (as distinct
from "overtly aggressively") challenge only the sky and his or her skill set.
In the U.S. at any rate, considering only this century, several pilots each
year manage to kill themselves during such "for fun" flights, and that
statistical toll is *after* I arbitrarily ignore fatalities "too easily
rationalizable" due to age and "stupid stuff" you or I would, of course,
*never* do.

"Low saves" were selected as a point of departure for discussing mind sets
that are generally - and maybe less generally - associated with that flight
condition, and NOT because "I have a thing for (or against) low saves."

"Generally associated mindsets" would include (say) Joe Newbie Pilot's
heightened anxiety/tenseness/nervousness due to the landing-may-be-imminent
flight condition combining with pushing their personal flight envelope. I'd
sure hope that J.A.S. Pilot would have some basic understanding of what s/he
should mentally expect the first time such a new/stress-enhancing/thin-margin
situation faces them...as surely it will and ought to be expected to.

"Less generally associated mindsets" include (in my case) active recognition
that if I get it badly wrong, - e.g. lousy coordination; "too slow" (aka too
high an angle of attack); untreated gust stall; improperly responding to (say)
wind-influenced visual optical illusion; etc. - due to my thin/may-be-thinning
ground clearance margin, I could just kill myself...as distinct from die.
Memory says I've always felt/thought that way about "flight with thin margins"
but regardless of when such thinking began, it's been a part of how I think
while soaring (and driving, and working/messing around anything - say, 120VAC
- with potential to kill me...) In other words, I think about death not as
something that "might HAPPEN" to me IF I screw up, but as something that *I*
will have done to myself BY screwing up. That awareness also doesn't morph
into fear; if I'm genuinely, I might die, fearful of something I can avoid
simply by choice, I don't do it.

I've actually talked about this aspect of thought with soaring buddies, and
it's never been clear to me if it's something unique, uncommon or common, but
I'm pretty much convinced it's not universal. Some of the more memorable
conversations involved folks who O'beer-Thirty-described their own thin-margin
situations with high-ish/active potential to kill them, but from whom I was
unable to elicit any admission they seriously recognized potential death as
anything more than a theoretical possibility. ("I'd never hose up *that*
badly!") Others seem to put black-and-white faith in their own personal "hard
deck" as if it were a talisman. ("How much altitude do I need at XYZ to get
safely out of the mountains back to Boulder?")

Without intending to pick on anyone or discount the sensibility of the hard
deck suggestion which I'll paraphrase as, "Talismanic hard deck = (height
fudge factor plus) 2x the demonstrated minimum height needed to recover from a
major wing/drop/incipient spin" put forth earlier in this thread, when I
combine the "talismanic protection aspect" which MAY accompany using such a
mental device with the potential reality of actually *experiencing* an
uncommanded departure from controlled flight "down low/close to the
above-defined hard deck," I can't help but wonder if the experience might
prove quite thoroughly more alarming than any/all practice in spin recoveries
"performed aloft." And, if that alarm may bring with it additional
flight-control-(mis-)handling problems by J.A.S. Pilot leading to the hard
deck maybe not being so talismanic as previously believed. Point being, that
thin margins are thin margins, and as such ALWAYS carry with them potential
for bad/deadly outcomes, which is one reason we generally practice spin
recoveries well above any proposed "hard XC deck" I've ever seen proposed.

Understand, I'm not "playing this mental game" out of (say) seasonal boredom,
or by way of trying to frighten people away from the sport, or a tendency to
contemplate my navel, but as a way of trying to get inside Joe Sailplane
Pilots' heads to (possibly) see if how they think matters as it affects how
they approach flying and consequently how they actually fly. While I see
"arbitrary hard decks" (and other such "shorthand guidelines") as a useful
training concept, particularly if approached by Joe CFIG with
cautionary/explanatory sharing of the hidden assumptions underlying them (the
"why" of the "shorthand what"), they - along with the rest of our training -
would seem inadequate, judging from NTSB glider fatality statistics. I suppose
it's possible we - the sailplane pilot community - have reached the
"irreducible minimum" number of annual deaths, but I'm far from convinced such
a conclusion is warranted. I know lifetime instructors (Tom Knauff comes to
mind) have their own specific training-based thoughts and suggestions as well.

Bob W.