RIP Tomas Reich - SGP Chile

"Would a "hard deck" prevent us from making certain mistakes?"

No, and that's not the point. The hard deck removes the points incentive for making those mistakes. There is a big difference between a rule against doing something, a ban, an attempt to stop something, and removing a positive incentive to do something. Now, we have a positive incentive for very low-altitude saves. Removing that incentive will not "prevent" anyone from doing anything. But it will lower the temptation. There is a difference between a law against something and removing a government subsidy for it. (Economist talking)

We do this throughout soaring. We do not allow pilots to land two miles from the airport, race back, reassemble and fly again. When we did, there were some poorly assembled gliders. We ban gyros, not trusting pilot judgement. We put points penalties in place for flying in restricted airspace. We force pilots to carry parachutes, and insurance.

We do it throughout sports. The olympics tries to ban doping. Bicycle racing forces people to wear helmets. Hockey forces players to wear mouthguards. Interestingly in every case the competitors fought it tooth and nail, just as now. In each case, it is interesting that competitors didn't want to lose the advantage that taking risks gave them. But they ignored that a rule that applies to everybody applies to everybody.

All ye who proclaim that "I'm a sensible pilot, I would never do anything that dumb," should be clamoring for the hard deck to prevent those crazies from stealing a contest from you by thermaling low. They're out there, and they will.

The hard deck is good enough for navy top gun school. I guess they're not manly enough for you?

On mountain flying. A hard deck is easy to implement, I think we agree, at the flatland sites where we do 90% of contest flying. Just what logic says "it's hard to do for mountain flying so we shouldn't do it at all?"

John Cochrane

All ye who proclaim that "I'm a sensible pilot, I would never do anything that dumb," should be clamoring for the hard deck to prevent those crazies from stealing a contest from you by thermaling low. They're out there, and they will.

The hard deck is good enough for navy top gun school. I guess they're not manly enough for you?


Readed my mind!


1 - Hard deck

On my first competitions we didn´t used yet minimum finish height here in Brazil, and I was feeling upset about the incentive to do stupid things on final glide... Regardles how fast I was on track there were allways the possibility of someone stealing your place only by irresponsible use of good luck.

Adding a hard deck on the whole contest area in my opinion would enhace security, it would force everyone to stop "pressing on" earlier in course (affecting decision making miles back the track), thus helping to avoid "no good landing options situations"

This deck heigh would depend on the terrain and weather we are flying in... it should not be too low in order to loose security sense, but not high enough in order to geopardyze the use of a otherwise "safely soarable day".

On F1 race, there are penalties for those who "put at least one wheel outside the track and get advantage with it". Our sport can adopt similar rules. As someone already said here, there are plenty of space between the racetrack and the guardrail/cushon/fence, why should we do not use the same "safety cushion"?

The hard deck may mean not landing out on track, some penalty points per occurence are enough incentive to avoid streching the risk.

I do not know about mountain flying, do not have experience on them.

2 - Flarm

Last pan american in 2017 in Argentina was an eye opening for me about the use of flarm (1st time using it). My past concern was that it would "beep" all the time without reason on a gaggle, but it did not happened... it only beeped when there was an actual incursion risk. In my humble opinion Flarm should be mandatory in all competitions, regardless of the number of gliders.

3 - Proximity penalty

But flarm alone is not the solution, a blue bird told me that IGC is already working on a score penalty proposal to discourage that fellow mate that "seems to be the owner" of the thermal. To me it would be a major improvement in safety.


Just my 3 cents.

Lautert - LA