Does How a (Sailplane) Pilot Thinks, Matter?

On Friday, April 1, 2016 at 12:34:06 PM UTC-4, BobW wrote:
Thought I'd start a new thread, kinda-sorta forked off one "festering" in "The
Boy Who Flew With Condors" thread (which I re-watched last night for the first
time in decades; cool!)...

On the card is a Grudge Match between two (irreconcilable?) schools of
thought. Will there be a WINNAH?!?

In one corner of the thought ring we have "Sensible Caution," while in the
other corner we have "Dangerously (some will say, "Irresponsibly"!)
Encouraging Personal Limits Expansion." The topic itself is LOW SAVES - are
they Killers or are they a Usefully Necessary XC Skill?

Offering expert commentary and analysis so far have been conflicted dustah
pilot, Mr. Agcatflyr, who can't seem to decide whether to live in the frozen
wastes of North Dakotah or the flesh-eating swamps of southern Alabammer, and,
the scion of the great Flubber fortune! Gentlemen - please continue your
thoughtful and thought-provoking analyses!!!

But seriously, kids, this philosophic aspect of "safe flight" has intrigued me
since before I began taking flight lessons. How safe is "safe enough?" Is
life-continuing safety rigidly definable through numbers? Is there a "best
way" to go about inculcating safety into and throughout the licensed pilot family?

Let's keep the discussion focused by considering ONLY the topic of "low
altitude saves," sooner or later something every XC-considering sailplane
pilot - having the slightest of imaginations - will consider, and (by
definition) will soon actually have to DO, once undertaking XC, whether such
XC occurs pre-planned or not.

For better or worse, the FAA is of little numerical help on this front. More
to the point, the first two shared-between-glider-n-power GA fields I found
myself glider-based at had 200' DIFFERENT "recommended pattern altitudes":
1000' agl and 800' agl. Having obtained my license at the 1000' agl pattern
field, encountering the 800' agl pattern field as a low-time, newbie,
stranger, lacking the comforting mental embrace of a personally-knowledgeable,
mutually-trusting-instructor, was conumdric: should I fly at the 800' agl
pattern field using the "When in Rome" philosophy of life, thereby also
definitionally and arbitrarily throwing away 20% of my entrained "pattern
safety altitude?" Or should I defy those crazed madmen flying from the
new-to-me field and fly "as safely as I'd been sensibly taught?"

For better or worse, I opted for the "When in Rome" approach, reasoning it
reduced the theoretical chances of a "descending onto someone else" mid-air,
while shifting to me 100% of the responsibility for not killing myself by
augering in due to a "dangerously thin ground clearance" margin. (I've always
felt that way about augering in! Long before Nancy Reagan took credit for the
catchphrase, "Just say no!" I'd appropriated that same philosophy regarding
killing myself in a sailplane. )

So who's right? Which school of thought is "better"? Let's the contest begin!!!

Bob W.

P.S. To jumpstart the discussion, know upfront that my "personal safety
philosophies" embrace portions of both schools of thought, and - so I think -
in a non-conflicting manner. And - so far - I've had only one known-to-me
instance when a fellow pilot took serious issue with my flying...and his
back-seater later privately told me he disagreed with the PIC's take. It seems
"absolute agreement" on the safety front is tough to find among reasonable people!

One key element in this is the recognition that if you have a "departure" FOR ANY REASON (inattention, turbulence, surprise etc.) below a certain altitude YOU WILL hit the ground. It is important to be in-flight aware of when you have descended into the "I will be hurt" zone. Whether on not the risk is worth it to you is between you and your family.

Some of this discussion reminds me of the movie "The Great Santini".

If Bull Meechum were a glider pilot, I bet he would do the lowest of the low saves.

There has been some very good discussion on this thread but I haven't
seen anyone on the "safe" side accept anything said by the "unsafe"
side. What I hear is that, if Bob does something that scares Bill, then
Bill thinks it's "unsafe" regardless of how well thought out or executed
the maneuver. People die every day in traffic accidents. Does that
make driving unsafe? Or does it simply indicate that there are both
mechanical failures and inattentive drivers? And while proper
maintenance can take care of most, but not all, of the mechanical
failures, you simply can't fix stupid.

Now I'm waiting to hear that people who perform low saves must be "stupid".

And please note, I don't do "low saves". I try not to get low out on
course and, if I get low enough to get worried, I simply land. And when
I see something that gives me the willies, I consider who is the pilot
and what I know his skill and experience to be. I will tell a newbie
that his final turn was too low, but not an experienced guy. He knows
what he's doing (usually).

Dan

On 4/4/2016 8:21 PM, son_of_flubber wrote:
Some of this discussion reminds me of the movie "The Great Santini".

If Bull Meechum were a glider pilot, I bet he would do the lowest of the low saves.

--
Dan, 5J

On 4/4/2016 3:22 PM, John Godfrey (QT) wrote:
Snip...

One key element in this is the recognition that if you have a "departure"
FOR ANY REASON (inattention, turbulence, surprise etc.) below a certain
altitude YOU WILL hit the ground. It is important to be in-flight aware of
when you have descended into the "I will be hurt" zone.

Absolutely - what John says!!! Apparent lack of said "hurt/death zone
awareness" seems (to me) to be a fairly consistently missing element in "the
vast majority of" this millennium's U.S. glider fatalities in the NTSB's database.

Moreover, it's usually easily found/seen at any glider site on any flying
weekend, in my observational/participational experience. One of the funnier
(to me, and, because no glider pilots were harmed in the making and gaining of
the experience) occurred on a non-soarable, flat calm, clear, winter-season,
day at one of our Club's winch camps. Our nose-hooked 2-33 with two
experienced (both had made more than one successful OFL), "potential PICs" on
board, got a lowish snap (600'agl?) and - to my surprise - instead of doing
whatever the PIC thought reasonable to do under the circumstances, but doing
it from a position allowing them "no-brainer pattern entry considerations"
proceeded to do it from more or less directly along the center line of the
runway, down to "considerably lower than would've been prudent at our busy
home field." And *then* instead of performing a distance-minimizing teardrop
turn onto final, the "home field's, textbook mandated, 4-leg pattern was
(safely, if tree-scrapingly low base-to-final turn) performed...to the more
distant end of the runway (presumably for "next snap" convenience reasons).

Because I knew both pilots, I wasn't terribly worried about them actually
killing themselves or horribly bending the sailplane, but as I watched the
(inexplicable, to me) meanderings going on more or less overhead, I got the
image of a drunken sailor stumbling about, utterly planless. The three of us
hee-hawed about it afterwards, though I seemed to find the drunken sailor
analogy funnier than did the actual PIC. (Happily, the *actual* PIC admitted
to some embarrassment for the lack of obvious/decisive flight planning, but I
later had to apologize to him for using - in a suitably anonymous fashion -
the incident as "safety filler" in our Club's newsletter, which I put together
for years because it was fun for me to do. Using "anonymized" on-field
sillinesses was a routine part of its content, but occasionally a "rightfully"
embarrassed pilot took offense. Curiously, I can't recall ever having occasion
for them to appear in future issues, while - sad to say - that wasn't
universally true of *every* PPG-carrying Club member.)

Whether on not the
risk is worth it to you is between you and your family.


Indeed, although the anal part of me feels compelled to add that government
minions always maintain an interested watch on the statistical front, so to
that potential extent, effects also theoretically extend to the rest of the
piloting community at large.

Bob W.