Eric, thanks for the response. While you have been flying relatively high performance machines, I have chosen to go a different route. The challenge for me is doing more with less. I fly a very low performance bird and have been pursuing the goal of setting records and making long distance flights in a 22/1 L/D machine.

To successfully do this type of flying requires a completely different set of soaring skills than the ones you use. Namely, I have to become "comfortable" with multiple low saves on virtually every record flight due to the fact that I do not have the lift-finding-reach that comes with higher performance. As a direct corrolary, I have to also become very proficient in the evaluation and utilization of every available scrap of landable terrain. I don't have the luxury of many others who have the "wing power" to cross large tracts of ground considered unlamdable. For me to reach my goals, I have to intimately know the skills I mentioned previously.

While my situation would be considered extreme by many, it is not. It is simply returning to the type of flying that the soaring pioneers of the 50's and 60's did. But now it can be done with the benefits of modern "high performance" electronic aids such as flight computers, gps, active real time wx, and active tracking, all of which increase the safety and efficiency factors to points our pioneers could only have dreamt of.

All that being said, the skills and the repetitous practice needed to gain those skills (things the successfull pioneers all had) are things that, in my oinion, need to be brought back into vogue. In todays day and age, there is entirely too much dependance upon performance and motorized aid to save a fellow. Proof of this is clearly seen in the rash of fatalities we are seeing.

It is well, necessary, and good to have personal risk standards. I also have them. But what does one do when they find themselves in a pinch, when they find that they have inadvertantly put their tail in a crack. This is what is happening. Sure there are probably a few guys who are simply flying hell bent for leather and as a consequence getting themselves killed. But I think the vast majority of the fatalities and serious injury accidents we are seen are more of the former case, where guys are simply slightly over extended, and finding themselves in a predicament, have no idea how to handle it.