Reason 28, 29, 30.... why I don't paraglide

On 3/22/2011 8:20 AM, Nyal Williams wrote:


worthyAt 01:29 22 March 2011, Eric Greenwell wrote:
On 3/21/2011 6:00 PM, bildan wrote:


An airworthy spar in a glider flown by a well trained pilot who knows
and follows the rules has a 0% chance of breaking.

Wasn't that the point of the website? That the paraglider has a
relatively large, non-zero chance of "breaking", even though you are
well trained and follow the rules? I don't know if he's right, but
seemed to be reasonable argument, that many/most accidents began when
the paraglider became unairworthy. That seems different from our
sailplane experience, where I'd say most glider crashes involve an
airworthy glider.

Have you factored out the unairworthy gliders made so by faulty assembly?

Yes, I was thinking of gliders that were airworthy at the beginning of
the flight. I would also exclude all paragliders that were not airworthy
at the beginning of the flight.

--
Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA (change ".netto" to ".us" to
email me)

I don't think that bringing people to soaring is done by trashing
other aviation sports. One could come up just as easily with morbid
"reasons 23, 24, 25.... why gliding is not a good idea".

As a glider and paraglider pilot, my reasons to practice both sports
have so far exceed the list of reasons not to. They both have some
level of danger and failure to ignore this when I go fly would be an
added source of danger.

On Mar 21, 6:00*pm, bildan wrote:
It's not hard to ascribe the other 5% to pilots as well since
the pilot is charged with insuring his (it's usually guys) aircraft is
airworthy.

An airworthy spar in a glider flown by a well trained pilot who knows
and follows the rules has a 0% chance of breaking.

Wait. If pilot n-1 overstresses said spar, then chances of it breaking
may be closer to 100% for pilot n. Yet, the damage may well be
invisible and impossible to detect during normal preflight. Are you
saying that if pilot n gets killed then it is his own fault for not
properly x-raying the wings before flying?

B.