At 05:12 30 April 2004, Graeme Cant wrote:


'Gliders have the highest rate of midairs of all forms
of hard wing aviation.'

Why is that? Are glider pilots in general less capable
of keeping a good lookout? In my experience no, they
are not. It is because we put ourselves in a position
where we are more likely to come into contact with
other gliders. As a matter of course we accept the
need to fly close to one another whereas the rest of
the GA community and commercial sector try to stay
as far apart as possible. The military do deliberately
fly close to one another, is this not the reason why
military aircraft have more mid-airs with each other
than airliners have with each other?

I have to agree that gadgets are not the answer to
the problem, good lookout and situational awareness
is, and the good sense to bug out if you loose that.

Just assume for one minute that a device could do all
that has been proposed, predict a collision with another
thermalling glider. The alarm goes off and the pilot
takes immediate avoiding action, that is what the device
is for, and immediately puts himself in the path of
another glider in the thermal who did not figure in
the prediction. The cure could be worse than the disease,
such a device has the potential of causing the very
event it seeks to prevent. Remember you are never alone
in a thermal for long, if the lift is good others will
want to share it, you only have to look up at the sky
a few minutes before the gate opens at a comp when
there is only one good thermal to see what I mean.
Can you imagine the carnage if they all start to react
to collision alarms? At least at the moment they are
all doing more or less the same thing.

The answer is, good lookout, good situational awareness
and the ability to put safety first, press on itius
second. Don't expect the other guy to get out of your
way, get out of his, and if that means he has an advantage,
sobeit, at least you continue to fly on intact.

DAJ

Whatever happened to teaching good look out and airmanship?


Nothing. It's still taught and practiced as effectively,
efficiently
and thoroughly as it ever was - and has been for many
years. And it's
just as ineffective as it ever was.

Are you one of those who see it as simply a problem
of laziness and
complacency? You're probably right but they're both
endemic in human
nature and won't change now. For jobs as important
as this, monitoring
systems designed with built-in tendencies to distraction
and complacency
- and with multiple duties just to top it off - are
simply inadequate
and always will be.

All forms of training in lookout are doomed to fail
because of basic
human limitations. Not just optical limitations.
Humans are simply bad
at continuous alertness and monitoring for a very low
probability threat
over a long period. That's why we no longer have engineer's
panels in
the flight decks of large aeroplanes. There's as much
or more to
monitor than there always was - we've just accepted
that humans don't do
it well and found other solutions.

Gliders have the highest rate of midairs of all forms
of hard wing
aviation. I'm happy with the collision threat and
the things I do to
minimise it and I'll go on flying gliders. If you're
not happy, Dave,
you need to accept that it won't be improved without
electronic
assistance.

Isn't 50 or more years enough?

Graeme Cant