2019 SSA Contest Rules Pilot Opinion Poll Now Open

Hi John,

Thanks for the response. I'm not really looking to get involved but I
suppose I must respond as I believe fear mongering around landouts
may account for part of the US reluctance to progress and people
need to see both sides of the argument, not just the opinion of one
or two stubborn individuals whenever someone mentions change.

Of course it's not completely safe. Very few aviation activities are.
I'm sure you yourself have completed many takeoffs and landings
safely, yet accidents happen there too. Do we blame the takeoffs
and landings? should we find a way of reducing them? Maybe golf?

No wonder there is apprehension around the topic when we have
people comparing landing out to putting a revolver to ones head. If
we were to use that analogy though I would point out that I've been
trained not to put any rounds in it. I'd have a hard time getting hold
of one though, here in the UK we just wave our fists at one another.

A good example of selection bias would be noting that a community
that lands out extremely regularly does have accidents now and
then, and deducing from this data that the chances of an accident
are high despite knowing only the final output figure.

I might add, by far the most field retrieves I see happen during the
course of normal club flying, rather than at contests. I wonder what
rules are driving these non competitors to landout?..



At 23:48 29 October 2019, John Cochrane wrote:
"I've somehow managed to survive all of my competition years so
far
without meeting an untimely end. That includes a good number of
landouts in the early years which, would you believe with decent
training and without an unfounded and inflated percetion of risk
were carried out incident free."

"I put this revolver to my head, pulled the trigger 3 times and it
hasn't
gone off yet. It must be safe"

I thought we in aviation got rid of this sort of thinking about safety
a
long time ago. Two words: selection bias.

I read Sailplane and Gliding, the wonderful UK publication. The
incident
reports in the back of the magazine are full of landout damage,
much of it
in contests.

I would be curious whether the fraction of UK pilots who fly
contests is
any greater than the number in the US. My impression from S&G is
an active
contest scene, like the east coast of the US -- and a whole lot of
pilots
who do not touch the stuff.

John Cochrane