DO YOUR CONTOL CHECKS!

Bullwinkle wrote:
Yes, the towpilot knew. He was doing a bit of shaking himself, having just
nearly had his nose driven into the ground. Yet, he, too, drove on that day.

As I remember it (this was over 20 years ago) the towpilot made a pattern,
landed, towed a couple of other gliders, and then the -20 driver was ready
to go again.

Janos and Mark raise an interesting point, though: this was a highly thought
of pilot, the only one who regularly entered competitions. He went cross
country just about every time he towed, when the rest of us were beating the
towplane back to the ground. Thus, he was widely perceived as the best pilot
on the site. Who would have been in a position to sit him down and have the
"come to Jesus" talk he so richly deserved?

What talk did he deserve? If he repeated the bad procedures the next
week, yes, but what made you think he hadn't learned a valuable lesson?
Perhaps he'd already determined the cause and the solution by the time
he'd pushed the glider back to the launch point. What makes you think he
would repeat that mistake?

Not everyone is rattled by a mistake, even a potentially lethal one.
Some can analyze it, correct it, and move on. I've seen good pilots do
this in minutes, not days.

Thinking back on it, the
"culture" at that gliderport just wouldn't have supported it.

A way to start might have been "Wow, that was close! How are you going
to avoid that in the future?" Perhaps the club missed an opportunity to
see how mistakes should be handled, and possibly a good pilot didn't get
some questioning he needed.

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Eric Greenwell
Washington State
USA