How dangerous is soaring?

Fairly stupid comment.

I have come to the same point as Patrick a couple of years ago (although
with just about half the experience) when in my region a had a total of 18
fatalities in one year. Southeastern France is probably the most crowded
gliding aerea you could imagine, but 18 is a lot, and 3 of them were members
of my club.

I was asking myself the question when I would be the next, and I stepped
back from gliding for almost a year to have a thourough thought at it (and
to discuss alot with gliding buddies).

I came to the conclusion that attitude towards the risk of flying is the
most important point, and that the key point for maximum safety is to be
*always* aware of the situation and of one's actual personal abilities and
limits - *always* and in *every* situation. One glitch can be the fatal one.

If others don't follow that rule and have a hard encounter with the planet,
I won't be able to change that.

So I decided to live as best as possible up to that rule, and not to be
negatively influenced by the fate of the 5-10 fellow pilots who die every
year here in Europe.

After that decision, I went and bough my first glider (after 17 years of
club operation).
And I enjoyed every single minute I spent flying it (and the upgrade gliders
which came up eventually). The only question I put myself since was - how to
get more flight time....

Bert


"Kloudy via AviationKB.com" u33403@uwe wrote in message
news:7a84aae7eb4e9@uwe...
wrote:

But my
main consern still is that people dies. Of course you can die
anywhere, doing anything. But none of my tennis friends hasn't died on
tennis court. None of my icehockey friends hasn't died on ice rink.
None of my sailing friends hasn't died while sailing and so on... But
I've lost and wittnessed way too many fatalities. It totally changes
your view when you are first person on an fatal accident site. Done
that 4 times. Sure there has been stupid errors, but still. You can't
rig your tennis racket wrong...


OK..you're thinking too much.

That's the first sign.

Time to quit.

--
Message posted via AviationKB.com
http://www.aviationkb.com/Uwe/Forums...aring/200710/1

Soaring is riskier than driving a car. Competition soaring and
aggressive cross-country soaring are riskier, still, although they are
typically practiced by more experienced pilots who should (key word)
know how to manage those risks. There's a good article about safety
and risk by former World Champion Bruno Gantenbrink on DG's Web site:
http://www.dg-flugzeugbau.de/index-e.html. If you fly cross-country or
competitively and haven't read it, please do.

I grew up mouthing the cliche (an international one, apparently, based
on Bruno's article) that the most dangerous part of soaring was the
drive to the airport. In fact, flying is the most dangerous part. In
40+ years of soaring, I've lost quite a few friends and acquaintances
to glider crashes, including my father and my best friend, both highly
experienced pilots. I've been first on the scene at fatal crashes. I
think about the potential downside consequences of soaring before
every contest and often when driving to the gliderport (although,
oddly, seldom when I'm flying). I've got two 13-year-old daughters who
would be devasted if something happened to me while flying.

Yet I continue to fly. Soaring is the most fulfilling, exciting,
rewarding activity I participate in, and I feel more alive for it.
Nothing matches the exhilaration of completing a task or an ambitious
flight knowing I've flown well. And I'm honest enough to admit that if
soaring were completely risk free, it wouldn't have the same appeal. I
suspect more than a few of my fellow pilots share this "condition"
although I would describe none of them as thrill seekers or dare
devils.

Yet I do everything I can to minimize the risks balanced against my
desire to compete and fly cross country. I bought my current glider
because it had a safety cockpit and impact-absorbing landing gear. I
equipped it with a canopy wire deflector bar, an ELT, a 6-point safety
harness, a rear-view mirror, and more than a gallon of easily
accessible drinking water. All this was to keep me out of trouble and
to help me survive trouble if it occurs. I'm considering installing a
transponder or a portable collision avoidance device to reduce what I
think is my biggest risk currently--being hit by a power plane in the
busy airspace where I fly west of New York City. I'm probably more
cautious than some. I know my limits and don't knowingly exceed them.

Soaring isn't for everyone. One pilot I know, a good one, dropped out
of soaring after his wife got sick and died. As much as he loved
soaring, his children were young and he didn't feel it was fair to
them to continue something that increased the risk they might end up
losing both parents. He intends to get back in the game when they're
older. I think he made the right call for him.

I confess that when I was in my 20s, I not only mouthed the cliche
about driving being more dangerous than flying, but I glorified the
risks that even then I acknowledged existed in order to enhance the
sense that I was doing something special, something extreme, something
most people would never experience. Now in my 50s, I see that part of
the appeal of soaring is the ability to push myself up against the
edge of the cliff, look over it, and then back away. I don't need or
want the risk that a power pilot flying head down and locked will plow
into me from behind (as nearly happened a few months ago) or the risk
that someone above me in the gaggle will make a mistake and spin down
through my altitude (as happened a few years ago). The challenge is to
work with the risks I can control. It's the ones I can't control--and
I'd be in denial if I said they didn't exist--that trouble me. There
are enough of those, plus the risk that I will make a bad mistake
someday (I'm not in denial about that, either), to remind me that
soaring is inherently risky compared with most of the other things I
do. To date, those risks are not sufficient to cause me to quit
soaring. But we're all different and what works for me may not apply
to anyone else.

Chip Bearden
ASW 24 "JB"
USA

You might want to think of adding a Ballistic Recover Chute to your glider
safety upgrades.

Mike Schumann

"Chip Bearden" wrote in message
ups.com...
Soaring is riskier than driving a car. Competition soaring and
aggressive cross-country soaring are riskier, still, although they are
typically practiced by more experienced pilots who should (key word)
know how to manage those risks. There's a good article about safety
and risk by former World Champion Bruno Gantenbrink on DG's Web site:
http://www.dg-flugzeugbau.de/index-e.html. If you fly cross-country or
competitively and haven't read it, please do.

I grew up mouthing the cliche (an international one, apparently, based
on Bruno's article) that the most dangerous part of soaring was the
drive to the airport. In fact, flying is the most dangerous part. In
40+ years of soaring, I've lost quite a few friends and acquaintances
to glider crashes, including my father and my best friend, both highly
experienced pilots. I've been first on the scene at fatal crashes. I
think about the potential downside consequences of soaring before
every contest and often when driving to the gliderport (although,
oddly, seldom when I'm flying). I've got two 13-year-old daughters who
would be devasted if something happened to me while flying.

Yet I continue to fly. Soaring is the most fulfilling, exciting,
rewarding activity I participate in, and I feel more alive for it.
Nothing matches the exhilaration of completing a task or an ambitious
flight knowing I've flown well. And I'm honest enough to admit that if
soaring were completely risk free, it wouldn't have the same appeal. I
suspect more than a few of my fellow pilots share this "condition"
although I would describe none of them as thrill seekers or dare
devils.

Yet I do everything I can to minimize the risks balanced against my
desire to compete and fly cross country. I bought my current glider
because it had a safety cockpit and impact-absorbing landing gear. I
equipped it with a canopy wire deflector bar, an ELT, a 6-point safety
harness, a rear-view mirror, and more than a gallon of easily
accessible drinking water. All this was to keep me out of trouble and
to help me survive trouble if it occurs. I'm considering installing a
transponder or a portable collision avoidance device to reduce what I
think is my biggest risk currently--being hit by a power plane in the
busy airspace where I fly west of New York City. I'm probably more
cautious than some. I know my limits and don't knowingly exceed them.

Soaring isn't for everyone. One pilot I know, a good one, dropped out
of soaring after his wife got sick and died. As much as he loved
soaring, his children were young and he didn't feel it was fair to
them to continue something that increased the risk they might end up
losing both parents. He intends to get back in the game when they're
older. I think he made the right call for him.

I confess that when I was in my 20s, I not only mouthed the cliche
about driving being more dangerous than flying, but I glorified the
risks that even then I acknowledged existed in order to enhance the
sense that I was doing something special, something extreme, something
most people would never experience. Now in my 50s, I see that part of
the appeal of soaring is the ability to push myself up against the
edge of the cliff, look over it, and then back away. I don't need or
want the risk that a power pilot flying head down and locked will plow
into me from behind (as nearly happened a few months ago) or the risk
that someone above me in the gaggle will make a mistake and spin down
through my altitude (as happened a few years ago). The challenge is to
work with the risks I can control. It's the ones I can't control--and
I'd be in denial if I said they didn't exist--that trouble me. There
are enough of those, plus the risk that I will make a bad mistake
someday (I'm not in denial about that, either), to remind me that
soaring is inherently risky compared with most of the other things I
do. To date, those risks are not sufficient to cause me to quit
soaring. But we're all different and what works for me may not apply
to anyone else.

Chip Bearden
ASW 24 "JB"
USA




--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

On Oct 31, 9:18 am, Chip Bearden wrote:
Soaring is riskier than driving a car. Competition soaring and
aggressive cross-country soaring are riskier, still, although they are
typically practiced by more experienced pilots who should (key word)
know how to manage those risks. There's a good article about safety
and risk by former World Champion Bruno Gantenbrink on DG's Web site:http://www.dg-flugzeugbau.de/index-e.html. If you fly cross-country or
competitively and haven't read it, please do.

I grew up mouthing the cliche (an international one, apparently, based
on Bruno's article) that the most dangerous part of soaring was the
drive to the airport. In fact, flying is the most dangerous part. In
40+ years of soaring, I've lost quite a few friends and acquaintances
to glider crashes, including my father and my best friend, both highly
experienced pilots. I've been first on the scene at fatal crashes. I
think about the potential downside consequences of soaring before
every contest and often when driving to the gliderport (although,
oddly, seldom when I'm flying). I've got two 13-year-old daughters who
would be devasted if something happened to me while flying.

Yet I continue to fly. Soaring is the most fulfilling, exciting,
rewarding activity I participate in, and I feel more alive for it.
Nothing matches the exhilaration of completing a task or an ambitious
flight knowing I've flown well. And I'm honest enough to admit that if
soaring were completely risk free, it wouldn't have the same appeal. I
suspect more than a few of my fellow pilots share this "condition"
although I would describe none of them as thrill seekers or dare
devils.

Yet I do everything I can to minimize the risks balanced against my
desire to compete and fly cross country. I bought my current glider
because it had a safety cockpit and impact-absorbing landing gear. I
equipped it with a canopy wire deflector bar, an ELT, a 6-point safety
harness, a rear-view mirror, and more than a gallon of easily
accessible drinking water. All this was to keep me out of trouble and
to help me survive trouble if it occurs. I'm considering installing a
transponder or a portable collision avoidance device to reduce what I
think is my biggest risk currently--being hit by a power plane in the
busy airspace where I fly west of New York City. I'm probably more
cautious than some. I know my limits and don't knowingly exceed them.

Soaring isn't for everyone. One pilot I know, a good one, dropped out
of soaring after his wife got sick and died. As much as he loved
soaring, his children were young and he didn't feel it was fair to
them to continue something that increased the risk they might end up
losing both parents. He intends to get back in the game when they're
older. I think he made the right call for him.

I confess that when I was in my 20s, I not only mouthed the cliche
about driving being more dangerous than flying, but I glorified the
risks that even then I acknowledged existed in order to enhance the
sense that I was doing something special, something extreme, something
most people would never experience. Now in my 50s, I see that part of
the appeal of soaring is the ability to push myself up against the
edge of the cliff, look over it, and then back away. I don't need or
want the risk that a power pilot flying head down and locked will plow
into me from behind (as nearly happened a few months ago) or the risk
that someone above me in the gaggle will make a mistake and spin down
through my altitude (as happened a few years ago). The challenge is to
work with the risks I can control. It's the ones I can't control--and
I'd be in denial if I said they didn't exist--that trouble me. There
are enough of those, plus the risk that I will make a bad mistake
someday (I'm not in denial about that, either), to remind me that
soaring is inherently risky compared with most of the other things I
do. To date, those risks are not sufficient to cause me to quit
soaring. But we're all different and what works for me may not apply
to anyone else.

Chip Bearden
ASW 24 "JB"
USA

Chip,

Thanks for your comments, all well put.

I also lost my father in a soaring accident, in the 1979 US
nationals. He was an experience pilot and instructor and we just
don't know what happened.

I stepped into soaring 25 years later as my family matured and I
couldn't resist the enticement any longer. My family is aware of the
risks, as am I. We accept that something may happen to any of us on
any given day, most likely not even related to soaring.

I agree with most of the comments relating to managing risk. I try to
do all I can to understand the sources of risk. Read accident reports,
analysis the actions of other pilots around me, and introspectively
evaluate my own errors and limitations. As an instructor I am
constantly exposed to "common" errors and thought processes that lead
to increased risk. Whenever I'm aware of a potential for increased
risk, I narrow my tolerances and refrain from approaching the edges of
my skills. The point here is to maintain the self-awareness to
recognize the change in risk.

Not only in soaring but in just about every life activity there is a
need for situational awareness. We see it everyday on the highway
with the the casual driver that makes an inappropriate lane change,
for example. In aviation we are particularly sensitive to the need
for situational awareness as the inherent risks are indeed greater. I
feel that one of my greatest challenges, as an instructor, is to
develop in my students the abilitiy to evaluate their situation and be
aware of the currently available options for action. In my experience
it is much more difficult than teaching someone to control the
aircraft, navigate, communicate, or any of the other tasks that are
evaulated in a pilot test or flight review.

I've probably nattered too long.

Mike

Bert Willing wrote:
Fairly stupid comment.


uh, not really.

But despite your poor manner I will elucidate for our thread host.

One year several friends and acquaintances died around me in soaring
accidents.
The year my daughter was born.
Everytime I climbed into the plane I began thinking about how the small
increase in risk to my safety became more acute to those counting on me. The
results of those risks were suddenly clearer, close and personal.
I thought about my friends.
I thought about my family.
Being too careful was starting to interfere with fluid responses to my
piloting.

I was thinking too much. Risk increased.

I Quit for 15 years to reduce the probability of injury in the interest of
those relying on my health.

Returned to soaring as our social/family/financial situation matured.

My mind is not occupied outside the task of piloting anymore.

Too much analysis can be a hazard.

--
Message posted via AviationKB.com
http://www.aviationkb.com/Uwe/Forums...aring/200710/1

I absolutely disagree, and I stand my point (and manner).

Once you stop thinking about the risk, you become one.

However, if the thinking about the risk starts to intimidate you, you are in
the wrong place.

Bert

"Kloudy via AviationKB.com" u33403@uwe wrote in message
news:7a860aefd44d3@uwe...
Bert Willing wrote:
Fairly stupid comment.


uh, not really.

But despite your poor manner I will elucidate for our thread host.

One year several friends and acquaintances died around me in soaring
accidents.
The year my daughter was born.
Everytime I climbed into the plane I began thinking about how the small
increase in risk to my safety became more acute to those counting on me.
The
results of those risks were suddenly clearer, close and personal.
I thought about my friends.
I thought about my family.
Being too careful was starting to interfere with fluid responses to my
piloting.

I was thinking too much. Risk increased.

I Quit for 15 years to reduce the probability of injury in the interest of
those relying on my health.

Returned to soaring as our social/family/financial situation matured.

My mind is not occupied outside the task of piloting anymore.

Too much analysis can be a hazard.

--
Message posted via AviationKB.com
http://www.aviationkb.com/Uwe/Forums...aring/200710/1

On 1 Nov, 08:26, "Bert Willing"
wrote:
I absolutely disagree, and I stand my point (and manner).

Once you stop thinking about the risk, you become one.

However, if the thinking about the risk starts to intimidate you, you are in
the wrong place.

I stopped flying for a while because I could only fly midweek and
there were just too many near-misses with military aircraft at my
(then) club. Personal best: a Tornado around two wingspans away, at
the same height. Intimidated? You bet I was.

Ian

On Nov 1, 9:26 am, Ian wrote:
I stopped flying for a while because I could only fly midweek and
there were just too many near-misses with military aircraft at my
(then) club. Personal best: a Tornado around two wingspans away, at
the same height. Intimidated? You bet I was.

EEK! Which (ex) club, if you don't mind me asking.
And I thought I was quite close enough to B1s maybe 5 miles away,
or C130s at my altitude and where I could count the individual
cockpit window panes.

I've also heard a story of a B52 lining up on the club's runway
(wheels down, wing root lights) before realising its mistake
and peeling off.

And I did witness some "interesting" commercial airliner and glider
movements at Lasham, back in the 70s.

Is there room in a B1/B52/C130/Tornado for a FLARM? :}

On 1 Nov, 10:20, Tom Gardner wrote:

EEK! Which (ex) club, if you don't mind me asking.
And I thought I was quite close enough to B1s maybe 5 miles away,
or C130s at my altitude and where I could count the individual
cockpit window panes.

Borders GC. Lovely club, excellent site beside the Cheviot Hills - and
that was the problem. Normally the fast military stuff stays at 500'
or less, so it isn't a problem for gliders. However both they and we
could be at 500' AGL in the hills, and there were too many close calls
for me to be happy.

It wasn't the military pilots' fault: I am quite sure they don't want
half a ton of fibreglass in their cockpits. However there did seem to
be some serious deficiencies in the Civil Air Notification Procedure,
with information about midweek gliding (hint to Mr Putin: invade over
the weekend) simply not getting through to the pilots.

Is there room in a B1/B52/C130/Tornado for a FLARM? :}

We did have a visit from a military ATC chap, and he said that a Good
Big Radar Reflector would help enormously. I was thinking about
installing an 18" aluminium cube reflector, made for yachts, in the
fuselage above the wheel.

Incidentally, this is probably ten years ago, and I think it very
likely that with the growth of BGC and increase in midweek flying
things should be much smoother and more effective now. Please, folks,
don't let this put you off flying there!

Ian

On Nov 1, 12:23 pm, Ian wrote:
We did have a visit from a military ATC chap, and he said that a Good
Big Radar Reflector would help enormously. I was thinking about
installing an 18" aluminium cube reflector, made for yachts, in the
fuselage above the wheel.

I've idly wondered about that, but I'd want to know that slow targets
aren't simply removed from the screen before the radar operator even
sees them. Even several decades ago "ground clutter" was routinely
removed by simply ignoring any reflection with a doppler shift of
less than 70mph.

Clearly it has to be more sophisticated than that for airborne
radars,
but I'm sure it is possible.