On Friday, November 29, 2019 at 7:36:05 AM UTC-8, wrote:
When someone once told me that I was lucky in life, I replied "I make my own luck."

I agree, but one has to draw a useful lesson.

Consider BlackJack with card counting. Definitely luck is involved because the cards are still random. Skill is involved to be able to understand the situation and choose when and how to play. Applying this skill allows one to manipulate the odds so that there will likely be a favorable outcome.. Does this not qualify as "making your own luck"?

Airplane flying requires knowledge and good judgment in choosing when, where, and how to fly. I can appreciate that there is a great deal of this separating old from bold pilots.


Performance soaring has the added random in that you are also dependent on the micro weather as a lift source. You deal with this by putting yourself in the best position to gather energy, hopefully while still accomplishing your task, but always remembering that things are unlikely to work out exactly as expected, so you are continually adjusting.

So for the final glide example, you do your best to setup a final glide, but if you hit continual sink, then move over to get out of the sink street quickly and into the lift street. If that doesn't work, you might be able to circle before getting too low. If that doesn't work, then you should have landing options near the airport. Continuing a deteriorating glide hoping that some unknown will prevent you from having to make your own luck seems one of those 'let us not do that again' things that makes good judgment.

Yes, developing black jack skills is an example of "making your own luck."

I once retrieved a guy who damaged his glider landing out in the Nevada desert sagebrush (they really aren't brush, but actually are small trees). He had a perfectly landable farmer's field on the other side of the valley, but chose to waste his valuable altitude looking for elusive lift. Obviously, this was a bad decision by the pilot that was totally avoidable. In this case, he made his own BAD luck.

People use "bad luck" instead of admitting to poor judgment. To paraphrase, luck is not a strategy, good planning and execution is.

Tom