Hard Deck

On Monday, February 5, 2018 at 6:11:40 PM UTC-5, John Cochrane wrote:
Bumping below as no response from any hard deck advocates:

JC: Sorry. I get tired of answering the same questions over and over

Its been a long thread but I think these are all new points / questions.

1) Lets define a typical contest area as a circle with a radius of 75 miles from the contest site. Lets assume this is Elmira. In this area the valley floors likely vary +/- 300ft and often that much within 10 miles of each other. Creating an SUA file to account for this would be nearly impossible.

JC: Even were this true, it is not a logical argument against a hard deck at Seniors, Hobbs, Uvalde, Perry, Cesar creek, Ionia, etc. etc. etc. where a single MSL altitude for most of the task area would suffice.

See Steve Leonard's post. Even over "flatlands" turn point / terrain can very by hundreds (even more than a thousand) feet. Also, are we going to have some sites with hard deck and others without?


2) This is one more thing that will cause people to be staring in the cockpit instead of outside. Spending time looking at computers WILL lead to not spending time looking at potential landing sites. This WILL lead to accidents that would otherwise not occur. The question is will the hard deck prevent more accidents than it will cause. This is a question that would likely take 10 years of data to analyze. In the meantime the rule may cause more deaths than it prevents.

JC: I love this old saw, it comes back again and again. We have to ban GPS, pilots will just be looking at their computers all the time! Dear friend, if you're down at 550 feet and you're looking slavishly at the pressure altitude on your flight recorder, you have a screw loose. Anyway, it's just one number. And every flight recorder has an audio warning of airspace violation. If at 550 feet you hear "ding! airspace" and you have to look down to wonder if you might be about to hit Class A, you have another screw loose..

Except now you have people looking down at their flight computers when close to terrain (likely under 2 minutes until you need to climb out or land). Take your Mifflin carve out example. ****, I'm going to hit the hard deck, but if I fly towards the ridge there won't be a hard deck and I'll do that. Now I'm at the ridge, its not working and I've left myself no options to land.


3) The rule will penalize perfectly safe flying. I remember a 60 mile glide in dead air coming back to Mifflin while in the back seat of KS. Detoured to Jacks a few miles west of the airport and arrived about half way up the ridge (250ft+/-). Minimum sink speed and on top of the ridge in 30 seconds, home for the day win. If the SUA had a 300ft hard deck in the valley we would have crossed under it on the way to the ridge save. Result - landout.

JC: treated many times before. Again, not a logical argument against trying it at flatland sites. Already stated that in a mifflin situation you carve a hole for ridge flying.

Undoubtedly you have other reasons not to want to do it, but these are not logical ones.

Nope, I just think this adds significant complexity without any data supporting it that it adds in any way to safety. I can't say I follow every accident religiously, but the last stall / spin into terrain from low level that comes to mind recently is more than 10 years ago (Peter Masak at Mifflin) which your proposal would not have prevented. I really enjoy alot of your economics work - you're probably one of the top center-right economists of your generation. But you base that work on data, and I just don't think you have any data to support your proposal other than "I think this is a good idea." Thats the nonsensical argument Paul Krugman puts into the NYT on a regular basis .


John cochrane