On 8/2/2016 10:58 AM, wrote:
All you expert pilots are I'm sure fully capable of flying in such a manner
as to back up your arguments and I'm sure that you are very safe due to
your refined skills. But, is your particular point really relevant to the
overall safest best practice that the sport as a whole should be teaching
and modeling? Are you always in peak form at the end of an epic XC? Are
all of your friends in soaring as reliably skilled as you?

I said it before but I'll say it again:

The majority of gliders are more stall and spin resistant at medium to
steeper banks than at shallower bank angles. (This is aerodynamically
different than most airplanes). A continuous 30 degree bank from downwind
to final exposes a pilot to a longer period of stall/spin-at-low-altitude
risk than two brief periods of stall/spin resistant steeper banked turns.
(Or 3 turns in the clipped base pattern).

Since this thread is a "natural" for topical drift, here's additional "best
pattern practices" food for thought...

While playing in this millennium's NTSB glider-fatality database this past
winter, the question floating into mental view - when considering the (very
many) landing-pattern-related departures from controlled flight fatalities -
was, "Why did Joe Deceased Pilot NOT fly "a normal pattern?"

The (closely related?) question, "Why didn't Joe Deceased Pilot fly the BEST
PRACTICES pattern?" never occurred to me, since it seemed so obvious that loss
of aerodynamic control almost exclusively occurred during "grossly
non-standard" ("drunken sailor?") patterns as distinct from "seriously botched
standard patterns." Some might think the questions a distinction without a
difference, but not to my mind.

IOW, those U.S. glider pilots killing themselves in landing patterns generally
do so from patterns not REMOTELY appearing to be an implementation of a "best
practices" pattern. Makes a person think, it does...

Bob W.