Thermal right, land left

In article ,
Eric Greenwell wrote:
Mark James Boyd wrote:

Where's the stall warning horn? I'm still utterly baffled why there
isn't a stall warning device on each wingtip? Is this really that
much extra drag? Is it more drag than that caused by having
to make a wing design that buffets before a full stall?

It might be useful to look at small airplane accidents, since they DO
have stall warning horns. I'm under the impression that stall/spin
accidents are a big cause of fatal accidents also. Do you have any numbers?

I looked up the last ten years of gliders (49 fatalities)
and then I looked up a three month window of airplane fatalities
from 3/94 to 6/94 (102 fatalities). I got lazy and didn't want
to look through more than 100, but I wanted to see final reports, so...

Gliders: 21 stalls of 49 fatalities = 43%

If you eliminate midairs and disconnected controls, 21 of 42 = 50%

Airplanes: 9 stalls of 102 fatalities = 9%

If you eliminate midairs and disconnected controls, 9 of 91 = 10%

A bunch of the airplane ones were also night and/or IFR (less than
half). But it seemed real clear that more of the glider fatalities
could have been stalls. Anyway, I concluded that airplane guys
don't stall very much close to the ground...

I was also VERY surprised to find a lot of medical problems
with airplenes, and I don't think even one fatal glider accident
due to a medical condition. This is really surprising...I'll
need to look at all 250 fatal glider reports at some point to
see if there are ANY medical fatalities...

Anyway, yes glider pilots die from stalls as a real big
factor. I think it's because they don't have warning devices.
Hells bells, just hook 'em to the gear down and spoiler cracked
switches, so they're off the rest of the time (thermalling).

Or maybe somebody has a better idea. I dunno, I'm just real
surprised we don't have any stall horns at all on any gliders...



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Mark Boyd
Avenal, California, USA