End of Season Sunset Warning for SSA-OLC Participants

Eric Greenwell wrote:
Do you believe requiring pilots to adhere to FAA rules (already in place
before the flight) like airspace and sunset for an OLC flight is
"changing the rules" for an OLC flight?

I was responding to the specific comment "Obviously, night cross country
in gliders is very dangerous, due to the possibility of an outlanding
in a dark field, so I hope we don't have to wait until someone dies to
address this." My response is, perhaps, but I don't know of a single
fatal outlanding accident that has occurred after sunset, but I know of
some that have occurred before. By this reasoning, we would all be
safer if we banned daytime flight.

As far as the lights go, I can
imagine the IGC, OLC, or the SSA might decide (sometime in the future)
that competitions would be better if sunset was chosen for the end of
the day. I can't imagine it would happen without the usual discussion
(meaning, for example, Doug H wouldn't decide it on his own); and if it
did, there would be lot of discussion afterwards, and undoubtedly
pressure on our directors to reconsider, so it wouldn't remain for long
as an "arbitrary" decision.

My issue is transparency. If we're going to change rules, rightly or
wrongly, there needs to be a process by which there is public
notification of intent, time for discussion before the directors vote,
rather than afterwards, and plenty of public warning of the impending
change...

Marc

Marc Ramsey wrote:
Eric Greenwell wrote:
Do you believe requiring pilots to adhere to FAA rules (already in place
before the flight) like airspace and sunset for an OLC flight is
"changing the rules" for an OLC flight?

I was responding to the specific comment "Obviously, night cross country
in gliders is very dangerous, due to the possibility of an outlanding
in a dark field, so I hope we don't have to wait until someone dies to
address this." My response is, perhaps, but I don't know of a single
fatal outlanding accident that has occurred after sunset, but I know of
some that have occurred before. By this reasoning, we would all be
safer if we banned daytime flight.

Marc, this is a really an unfair characterization. You ignore the point
that night VFR in airplanes is significantly more dangerous than day
VFR. Obviously, the lack of accidents after dark (not sunset) in
gliders is due to the very low exposure, not a low risk. My point was
that if this became commonplace, eventually there would be accidents,
and these would be preventable if we did not encourage people to do
this by giving them a competitive advantage (i.e. more time to score by
continuing into the night). Your straw-man about banning daytime flight
is rediculous.

As far as the lights go, I can
imagine the IGC, OLC, or the SSA might decide (sometime in the future)
that competitions would be better if sunset was chosen for the end of
the day. I can't imagine it would happen without the usual discussion .

And that was exactly my point in posting this--to start the discussion.