Hard Deck

On Friday, February 2, 2018 at 7:12:53 AM UTC-5, wrote:
If we can control the usable airspace, let's make racing extremely fair so everyone uses the same air. We can have the CD create airspace "hallways" a few miles wide which connect each TP. Since we can detect where everyone is we can legislate the direction of travel within each hallway to avoid the mayhem of two way traffic.

Just because we have the ability to do something doesn't mean we have to do it. Safety rules should not be put into place to keep someone from killing themselves. Safety rules should prevent someone from taking others with them.

Someone augurs in because of "x" it really sucks. If the same "x" takes an innocent pilot or someone on the ground with them it is tragic.

Absolutely right!

I didn't get the whole part of this thread on winners. We pretty much know who the top 5 of any contest are going in to it. And accidents seem spread pretty evenly across the scoresheet.

The amazing thing to me as a constant safety guy is just how many risks I see guys in 26th place taking for a few more points. Ballistic trajectory over the last trees to make the airport and get a rolling finish. Flying through thunderstorms. Flying low over totally unlandable terrain. Last minute landouts often coming to grief. Flying 200 feet in to the clouds in start gaggles. Past VNE starts, back in those good old days. Aggressive gaggling. The land-out "patterns" described in the safety reports. Endless very low energy scary finishes back when we had the line (50 feet, 50 knots, middle of the airport is not a great place to be). Flying after all night retrieves and 2 hours sleep. Flying gliders with home-brew repairs after contest damage. None of these pilots does anything nearly so nuts in weekend xc flying..

Yes you say, give them a lecture to stop it, it's not worth it, you're not going to climb out of 26th place this way. And we have been giving that lecture for 50 years, with no discernible result. What do they say about doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result?

Meanwhile, when we put in a low speed start system and higher finishes, those crashes ended.

John Cochrane

On Friday, February 2, 2018 at 6:11:23 PM UTC-5, John Cochrane wrote:
Meanwhile, when we put in a low speed start system and higher finishes, those crashes ended.

We can debate the finish gate (actually, let's not!). But I've gotta question what data you have on high-speed start crashes. I didn't see any in your PPT (I'm not sure when we ditched the start gate but it was still around for at least part of your study period).

I only recall two. One in Minden in the 1970s caused (IIRC) by not locking the main pins so they ratcheted out and departed the fuselage (pilot bailed out successfully). The other was a PIO at Fairfield in the late 90s (?) when a handheld radio got loose in the cockpit and the pilot reached for it, losing control of the glider and departing the cockpit through the hole in the canopy created by the errant radio (also a successful bailout).

Oh, and I'm told there was a pilot who fluttered an early ASW 20 elevator in the 1980s and landed uneventfully to discover some internal damage in the control system.

High-speed starts always sounded lethal whenever CAI and the then Rules Committee were trying to justify mandating GPS flight recorders. Everyone just KNEW high-speed starts were dangerous! To me that's analogous to your average bystander thinking it simply must be dangerous to fly an aircraft without an engine.

I've actually been a lot more uncomfortable on the edge of start cylinders winding around in a gaggle faster and faster with half a dozen gliders all trying to stay a few feet below the top, watching the clock, looking out for at least half a dozen more orbiting in a different part of thermal plus another half dozen bumping the thermal on their way out of the cylinder. A few feet too high? No problem with the gate: just push over on your start run a little sooner. With the cylinder, get the brakes out and ease back down through the gaggle, but not too low, while watching the clock again. I'm not sure that's progress in terms of safety. Nothing comes for free. At least with the start gate, we knew precisely where the start traffic would be.

It's those unintended consequences again.

Chip Bearden

At 00:52 03 February 2018, wrote:


I only recall two. One in Minden in the 1970s caused (IIRC) by not
locking the main pins so they ratcheted out and departed the fuselage
(pilot bailed out successfully). The other was a PIO at Fairfield in the
late 90s (?)

Chip, there was at least one more, and it was fatal. It was an
ASW-19 which was owned by Einar Enevoldson and a USAF test
pilot partner. Einar's partner was practicing high speed starts (so it
may not actually have been during a contest) when he got the
elevator into a flutter mode. IIRC, the stabilizer came off, and he
was killed. I think it happened in CA, and there were law suit issues
so that the USA Schleicher dealer would have had legal issues had he
set foot in CA afterwards. The time frame was early 1980's. After
that, an AD came out to cut two triangular slivers (max 1" wide) off
the elevator trailing edges.

RO