Bob, I think your hitting the nail on the head. While a fuy may not be experiencing an in-air heart attack, age has a way of dulling the mind and slowing the decision making process, along with the reflexes. As the soaring pilot pool ages, we are most likely seeing and going to see more of age/imparing accidents.

I know in my situation, I have moved my dusting flying from the quite demanding area of E washington/W idaho, down into the flat land of the midwest. The primary reason was to minimize the challenges involved in ag flying. While I started my dusting career in those western hills with numerous very very challenging fields, I was young-slightly dumb, and dodged death fairly easily. Getting older I know for a fact, that I do not have 20 year old reflexes. Flight experience and muscle memory (instinctively knowing what action to take) has probably balanced out the loss. But old age will eventually win. I will give myself another 5 years or so of ag flying and then pull the plug on that type of flying. Not due to not being able to effectively do it, but due to knowing that those challenges require a continual concentration. In addition, I told myself years ago I would stop flying ag the year I find myself thinking about other things while on-swath, and not calculation and reassessing exactly where, in an emergency, I am gonna set her down from any position in the field. A guy has to know instantly what move to make, turn left, right, straight ahead etc. Without total concentration, a guy either does a crappy job of application or worse gets his tail in a crack. This mental concentration has served me well all these years. A guy needs to know when to hang up the spurs.

While imop, soaring is much less demanding except in ridge running, or high speed flying, it still requires a level of concentration beyond that of tooling along in a c-172 at altitude. And that level of concentration needed INCREASES with diminishing altitude! aka getting low over marginal terrain, or in a landing pattern. When a guy starts to find himself not concentrating in those situations, just relying on experience “ I’ve landed this bird a thousand times, no big deal”, that should be a big yellow caution light, telling a guy he needs to re-evaluate his mental abilities.

However, on the other hand, My ag flying buddies think I am already “mental” for flying xc in a glider, and my soaring buddies think the same thing when they see me doing it in one with the glide ratio of a rock.