On 4/7/2016 2:36 PM, wrote:

I agree with 2G - I am a low time pilot - I know other LTP's that read this
blog and most do not reply, but many believe experienced high skilled guys
write.

I have had a few mentors (as I am trying to become a contest pilot) - all
of them have given me the same advice - "have a AGL deck where you stop
flying and start landing" - and I have been told "I have 10,000 flights and
can count on one hand the number of times I have successfully dug out from
400 ft AGL".

Actually, the longer the conversation continues, the more I think 2G and I are
in fundamental agreement, as I'll touch upon (briefly - honest!) below.

As for the advice you're getting, it's: 1) EXCELLENT, and 2) the same I give
everyone, regardless of experience or situation, whenever the topic of "When
should I break it off and land?" arises. Always - and I mean always - have a
height agl in mind at which you are *committed* to landing. That height may
well be lower than that at which you chose your ultimate field/approach (even
in the absence of attempting a "low save" as defined by 2G a few posts ago),
but it's a "hard deck." What it is depends on you, weather, geography...all
the things that go into how you assess your capabilities that time, that day.
And - so sensible pilots all hope! - it's not something you ginned like the
credits on "Monty Python and the Holy Grail"...you know, at great haste and at
the last moment.


For me it is a risk vs. reward - we know the ultimate risk..... the reward
is ???? (there are no chicks, money or sponsorship's) - so I guess the
reward is having a tale to tell.

Worrisomely to say, many's the time an "O'beer Thirty" B.S. session has led me
to seriously wonder if some pilots actually DO "unthinkingly" push their
personal limits primarily with "tale telling" as an (the?) active concept in
the backs of their noodles. Yeah, it scares me to listen to such tales...and
if I can do it without cutting them off at the psychological knees, I
generally look for a way to ask them, "What were you *thinking*?"


My suggestion to LTP's: do what most experienced contest pilots do/tell you
- and fabricate a really good story - most people will believe you - and
you get to live to tell about it

WH1


"What WH1 said!"
- - - - -

From the post to which WHI replied, 2G wrote (with snips):


As I have already said, my comments are directed a towards low-time pilots
who are reading this and are formulating their own personal risk/benefit
analysis. If you are willing to take calculated risks your assessment of
the risk level better be pretty good, which can only be developed after
years and, perhaps, thousands of hours of flying. Certainly, your 200 hr
pilot will not have those skills. This is the experience level where the
accident rate climbs significantly; they overestimate their capabilities.

We're in 100% agreement here! (And for the record, my posts were directed not
at pilots of "a certain experience level" but at pilots of ANY experience
level who maybe have not "sensibly thought through" how they mentally approach
flight at reducing/reduced margins. Again, I'm of the opinion that how they
think about flight in the "thin margin regime" matters.)
- - - - - -


Statistical analysis can be misleading. The Concord has the best safety
record in the industry until one crashed - then they had the worst. The
odds of a certain maneuver going wrong after 1000 attempts is the same as
the first attempt. A pilot with 10,000 hr will die just as dead as a 100 hr
pilot in a stall spin crash.

More 100% agreement!
- - - - - -


I have found that there a group of people on this group that are down right
antagonistic towards any discussion of safety to the point of being
abusive. I know they will always be out there and are not receptive to risk
analysis.

Such, indeed, is the world. Happily, in my experience, this sort of attitude
is far less common in soaring aficionados than in society in general, or (sad
to say) even in certain segments of the aviation community...
- - - - - -


I am WELL AWARE that flying involves risks which cannot be eliminated. But
they CAN be managed. During the summer I fly in eastern Nevada where
afternoon thunderstorms are common and landable fields, let alone airports,
are scarce. Some of us have developed our own risk threshold: if the
forecast probability of thunderstorms in the area are 30% or higher we
don't fly. My simple rule is: I would rather be on the ground wishing I was
up flying than be up flying wishing I was on the ground.

More 100% agreement! "Mentally ACTIVE" management is what I'm advocating for.
My very first - regrettably, not my last - microburst experience was one of
those "I wish I was on the ground!" situations. By the time I'd managed to
work myself onto some semblance of a final approach into a grass strip from
which a C-182 regularly flew, it had occurred to me that if - after the
arrival - I could even *walk* (and SCREW the airframe!), I'd be overjoyed.
That was one of the (very many) days when I learned something(s) about weather
I've yet to find in a book, namely that microbursts don't require massive
thunderstorms (or even thunderstorms at all), high cloudbases, or "obviously
menacing" weather. None of those existed that day.

Bob W.