RIP Tomas Reich - SGP Chile

I've got an idea. Lets mandate that all contest ships be motor equiped and fly the tasks running their engines. The pilots can all use earplugs so they dont hear the motor running and we can pretend we are "soaring". Guys would still put themselves into dangerous situations. So the ultimate solution seems to be, line up all the contestants on their computers and run a condor based contest. That will show us who the best are and wow no risk to manage other than maybe blowing a fuse.

Ridiculous ideas? For sure they are. But so is the continual dumbing down of the skill set necessary to xc soar. Cross country soaring is unforgiving of the idiotic and the inexperienced and the arrogant. It always has been, it always will be. All the rules in the world will not change that fact. Just like all the tea in china won't make a cup of coffee.

Heres an idea that would probably save more lives than any of the above mentioned rules. Before a guy can fly in a contest, he needs to actually demonstrate the ability to land his ship over a 60 ft obstacle With MINIMUM ENERGY stopping within 800ft of the obstacle. I can tell you the failure rate at that test would be high. But those that actually spent the money and time to nail that skill will keep themselves alive even if they have to put down in a vineyard or a sagebrush covered valley or even a rock pile. I have been part of retreaves for all of the above mentioned landings, ships were busted up, sure, but injuries were all minor. Mostly just bruised egos and pocketbooks. CONTROLLED flight into rough terrain IS survivable, not pretty but survivable. Ask me how I know. But it takes a mindset thats ready for it.

Should guys not put themselves in these type situations? You bet. But even the most conservative contest flier will tell you they have found themselves in a pickle at least once in their racing career which they extracated themselves from or survived vowing to never do that again. I know I have been there. Neither the lack or the presence of rules put them in that pickle, THEY PUT THEMSELVES in it! I put myself in it! The guy thats gonna kill himself racing, is gonna kill himself racing period due to his own mindset. All the rules out there just forstall the inevitable. We all know the guys out there who push beyond good reason. Put a rule in to prevent foolishness in one area and those same guys will push it in another area. It becomes a never ending cycle of reactionary thinking that never addresses the true problem and just curtails the liberties of others (sounds like the government lol). When all is said and done, the end outcome for the guy who doesn't appreciate the seriousness of his decisions or his lack of decisions is the same untill that guy changes internally.

On Friday, January 26, 2018 at 8:01:59 AM UTC-8, wrote:
I've got an idea. Lets mandate that all contest ships be motor equiped and fly the tasks running their engines. The pilots can all use earplugs so they dont hear the motor running and we can pretend we are "soaring". Guys would still put themselves into dangerous situations. So the ultimate solution seems to be, line up all the contestants on their computers and run a condor based contest. That will show us who the best are and wow no risk to manage other than maybe blowing a fuse.

Ridiculous ideas? For sure they are. But so is the continual dumbing down of the skill set necessary to xc soar. Cross country soaring is unforgiving of the idiotic and the inexperienced and the arrogant. It always has been, it always will be. All the rules in the world will not change that fact. Just like all the tea in china won't make a cup of coffee.

Heres an idea that would probably save more lives than any of the above mentioned rules. Before a guy can fly in a contest, he needs to actually demonstrate the ability to land his ship over a 60 ft obstacle With MINIMUM ENERGY stopping within 800ft of the obstacle. I can tell you the failure rate at that test would be high. But those that actually spent the money and time to nail that skill will keep themselves alive even if they have to put down in a vineyard or a sagebrush covered valley or even a rock pile. I have been part of retreaves for all of the above mentioned landings, ships were busted up, sure, but injuries were all minor. Mostly just bruised egos and pocketbooks. CONTROLLED flight into rough terrain IS survivable, not pretty but survivable. Ask me how I know. But it takes a mindset thats ready for it.

Should guys not put themselves in these type situations? You bet. But even the most conservative contest flier will tell you they have found themselves in a pickle at least once in their racing career which they extracated themselves from or survived vowing to never do that again. I know I have been there. Neither the lack or the presence of rules put them in that pickle, THEY PUT THEMSELVES in it! I put myself in it! The guy thats gonna kill himself racing, is gonna kill himself racing period due to his own mindset. All the rules out there just forstall the inevitable. We all know the guys out there who push beyond good reason. Put a rule in to prevent foolishness in one area and those same guys will push it in another area. It becomes a never ending cycle of reactionary thinking that never addresses the true problem and just curtails the liberties of others (sounds like the government lol). When all is said and done, the end outcome for the guy who doesn't appreciate the seriousness of his decisions or his lack of decisions is the same untill that guy changes internally.

Once again, the value I place in this idea is not that it will keep fools from being fools. Rather, it will save me from having to compete with fools. That is a big difference.

Once you have violated the hard deck you can be as foolish as you like, thermal right into the ground in an attempt to prevent a retrieve, I don't care. But you didn't win the contest by being foolish. We are not trying to legislate behavior with rules. We are trying to stop rewarding foolishness with a trophy, and punishing the wise by leaving them in the audience.

One of the most interesting, thoughtful and thought-provoking threads in
recent RAS history, IMO. Too bad how it came to be, and genuinely saddening
some among us will have future occasions to revisit this particular thought arena.

Excerpted from up-thread...
When all is said and done, the end outcome for the guy who doesn't
appreciate the seriousness of his decisions or his lack of decisions is
the same until that guy changes internally.

Some readers may take the above sentiment as merely another way of sanctioning
the, "Anything goes (woo hoo!)" worldview. I take it as "distilled human reality."

Bob W.

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On Friday, January 26, 2018 at 1:45:29 AM UTC-5, jfitch wrote:
On Thursday, January 25, 2018 at 7:41:40 PM UTC-8, Steve Koerner wrote:
Chip has made very good points. Most compelling is the simple point that a hard deck is a distraction. It's a contest scoring related distraction at a point in time and space that none of us can afford one. I know how much focus is required when approaching the class A airspace boundary. When a possible off-field landing is imminent, I don't have spare bandwidth to deal with an artificially created problem and its set of nuances.

I also strongly agree with Chip's point that human nature will allow that circling to the bottom of what is permitted must be OK for me since it would be OK for others. That factor, combined with the problem of altitude measurement uncertainty forces the hard deck to a large number that simply will not be acceptable.

I generally favor rules to encourage safety. I have long favored changing to mandatory Flarm. I see the hard deck idea, unfortunately, as not workable.

Why is the hard deck any different than the hard ground? Do you find the hard ground to be a distraction? You already successfully race over a hard deck - the ground. Why is this one any different?

In fact it is far less of a distraction, because violation of the rules results in a penalty, and violation of the ground results in death.

Because ground you can see and imaginary deck you can't so you have to keep looking at your instruments.