Wide-ranging Safety Discussion...?

On 7/4/2012 4:56 PM, son_of_flubber wrote:
On Sunday, July 1, 2012 10:52:37 PM UTC-4, Mike Schumann wrote:

Why is Soaring Magazine not the right venue for a detailed discussion of
accidents?

The majority of the fatalities discussed in Soaring are the fictional
characters found in Dr. Dan's Soaring RX column; and the magazine gets
grief over that (see this month's letters to the editor). Now imagine what
would happen if real accidents were openly discussed.

Everyone's entitled to opinions, and encouragement of the sharing of them is a
fundamental aspect of "the U.S. system." As is learning how to agree to
disagree...
- - - - - -


The obituary section in the magazine (Final Glide) does not even mention if
the death happened in a glider... not even an asterisk next to the name.

I wonder if this editorial policy is itself a historical accident, or if
the policy evolved over the years. Were accidents ever reported in the
magazine? I'd guess that they were and that it caused some discord (this
is pure speculation).


SSA members have online access to "Soaring" magazine - a treMENdous resource,
btw!!! - and a search using "Safety Corner" will yield decades' worth of
columns (beginning, I seem to remember, in the 1960s) of "useful safety
stuff," very often including description/assessment of real-world-explicit
incidents & accidents.

A search using "George Thelen" will yield author-specific sub-columns mostly
from the '80s and '90s, though George didn't limit himself strictly to
accident reporting.

Great stuff all, IMHO...
- - - - - -

After I'd begun taking soaring instruction in '72, but even before my first
copy of "Soaring" arrived, my club's chief instructor handed me a stapled
package of what turned out to be copies of "Safety Corner"...to tide me over
until my subscription started, he smiled. Then he added he expected me to tell
him what lesson I learned after I'd absorbed the reading material he'd given
me. (Curses! His freebie came with strings attached.)

Put me in the camp that recognizes "Soaring" mag is likely read by some
"'members of the general public," but who also believes its
primary-intended-audience is soaring *enthusiasts*. In any event, even - if
it's still around; I don't know - every issue I ever saw of the v-e-r-y
"general-flying-audience" magazine "Flying" openly discussed real-world
accidents, pretty much in every issue, by multiple authors, some on-staff,
some by readers.

Someone will surely note that "Flying" mag wasn't put out by a member
organization as SSA is. AOPA is a member organization as is EAA. Both of their
monthly "general audience" magazines routinely discuss various aspects of
aviation/piloting safety, sometimes "purely statistically" sometimes using
real-world examples.

I find the arguments: (paraphrasing) "SSA will be at risk/SSA will scare off
potential members," not terribly compelling reasons to NOT discuss in the
magazine real-world-scenario incidents/accidents. JMHO...
- - - - - -

MAJOR Kudos to every individual involved in making happen what Chuck Coyne
writes about in the July "Soaring" mag's "Flight Lines" column. Open
discussion hardly gets any better than what he describes!

Bob W.