2G wrote on 11/15/2019 10:16 PM:
On Tuesday, November 12, 2019 at 6:40:44 AM UTC-8, Richard Livingston wrote:
In mountain climbing there is the concept of "objective hazard". This is
a hazard that is recognized, such as climbing up a gully that occasionally
experiences rock falls. If you are in the gully when this happens it would
almost certainly be fatal. The wise climber recognizes this hazard and
decides what he can do to mitigate it, such as climbing before dawn when
rock falls are less likely (warming by sunlight tends to trigger these). He
then has to decide if, for a particular situation, the risk is worth the
reward (getting to the peak, or getting back to camp before the weather
turns bad).
The wise climber sometimes loses this gamble. The unwise climber loses
more often. Soaring is similar in that there are hazards that, through
training, experience and acquired skill, can be recognized and mitigated,
but never completely avoided. Each pilot must assess their own skill versus
the situation and decide if the reward is worth the risk. The wise pilots
will sometimes lose, but the unwise pilots will lose more often.
Rich L
I challenge you guys to go back thru the last few years of glider accidents in the US and find ANY fatal accidents that fall into these categories. Generally, they are the consequence of ****-poor airmanship.
I don't recall any recent incidents, but getting sucked into a cloud may be an
example of slowly reducing your margins because you got away with it before. I'm
thinking of Erik Larson, who wasn't killed, but bailed out of his ASH26E when it
became enveloped in a cloud while wave flying out of Minden. Another is Kempton
Izuno, who got pulled up into the cloud during thermalling, and very narrowly
avoided catastrophe. Both could have gone far worse. Another example might be Bill
Gawthrop's crash short of the runway at Truckee. All three of these were very good
pilots at the time of the incidents.
--
Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA (change ".netto" to ".us" to email me)
- "A Guide to Self-Launching Sailplane Operation"
https://sites.google.com/site/motorg...ad-the-guide-1