Hard Deck

Bill, I thought it was 100hrs, but, whatever.
Yes, complacency and, "I can do that" possibly coupled with, "I got away with it before, surely I can do it yet another time....".

As I said before, rules can't fix stupid. Whether a one time bad decision for whatever reason, or a symptom of poor judgement (that hopefully others locally point out on the side.....), rules don't fix stupid.
Continued training does.
Calling out someone to the CD/CM at a contest, talking to high time pilots/CFIG's locally "may" change someone's thought patterns.
Maybe not.
You know me, you know the active CFIG's at your home field, if you feel there is an issue, go talk to them.

"rules can't fix stupid." we hear that over and over. But it is amazing that when there are points on the table, stupid seems to blossom like mushrooms after a rain. And then vanish the moment we go home and points are off the table. Rules can reward stupid. Or not.

John Cochrane

John, you agree or not?
I'm going from the "lottery" of picking start times before 9am to sorta current rules.
I won't say I haven't done sorta stupid stuff in the past, I will say stupid stuff "usually" won't win a US contest.
So.......right back at ya........

Not arguing one way or the other, just voicing my opinion.

Stupid stuff usually does not win contests. Our winners are tremendously talented pilots. Occasional sporting risks are part of the game. One landout, aborted flight through thunderstorm, etc. will lose a contest. So, usually, avoid such problems. But when you have to go, you have to go.

The hard deck case is not about winners doing dumb things while the rest of us sane people sit around and grumble. It's about the many risks that non-winners seem to take when the points clock is on, and do not take when the points clock is off.

It's an interesting contrast. Everywhere else in aviation we seem to have this concept. Minimums for an IFR approach, or you go around, are pretty hard and fast. I don't see vast complaining about this encroachment on the pilots' freedom or judgement.

The FAA's rule which is even a law against busting minimums, with penalties.. The hard deck proposes no such force or penalty. It would be as if airlines gave pilots a $1000 bonus for landing on time, no matter what the weather, and we are proposing, hey, why don't we take the bonus off the table when reported cloudbase is below 500 feet.

John Cochrane

On Saturday, February 3, 2018 at 2:28:59 PM UTC-5, John Cochrane wrote:
Stupid stuff usually does not win contests. Our winners are tremendously talented pilots. Occasional sporting risks are part of the game. One landout, aborted flight through thunderstorm, etc. will lose a contest. So, usually, avoid such problems. But when you have to go, you have to go.

We (Aero Club Albatross - Blairstown, NJ) have had an atrocious record over the last 10 or so years. We've had at least 10 gliders seriously damaged or destroyed over that time period during field landings. None of these was during a contest. Many of them were during ridge flights, but not all. And we've had several that were incredibly close to being accidents. Not a single one was a record flight or had any "points" on the line.

I would submit that the problem isn't a scoring or points problem, but an airmanship problem.

P3

On Saturday, February 3, 2018 at 2:28:59 PM UTC-5, John Cochrane wrote:
Stupid stuff usually does not win contests. Our winners are tremendously talented pilots. Occasional sporting risks are part of the game. One landout, aborted flight through thunderstorm, etc. will lose a contest. So, usually, avoid such problems. But when you have to go, you have to go.

The hard deck case is not about winners doing dumb things while the rest of us sane people sit around and grumble. It's about the many risks that non-winners seem to take when the points clock is on, and do not take when the points clock is off.

It's an interesting contrast. Everywhere else in aviation we seem to have this concept. Minimums for an IFR approach, or you go around, are pretty hard and fast. I don't see vast complaining about this encroachment on the pilots' freedom or judgement.

The FAA's rule which is even a law against busting minimums, with penalties. The hard deck proposes no such force or penalty. It would be as if airlines gave pilots a $1000 bonus for landing on time, no matter what the weather, and we are proposing, hey, why don't we take the bonus off the table when reported cloudbase is below 500 feet.

John Cochrane

John,

I disagree that folks at 500 feet are thinking about points. in your safety analysis posted very far above, you showed a guy thermalling very low in stone valley, just to the northwest side of stone mountain. i've landed out there before. the guy wasn't circling at 400 feet thinking, "gee i better make this work or i'll lose all those speed points." he was thinking he better make that bubble work because he had nowhere else to go. his landing options were poor, he wasn't fighting for points, he was trying to stay out of a field. a hard deck doesn't accomplish anything to stop this situation from evolving.

points are on people's minds at 1500 feet when they think "man, i'm out of a good working band, and this is gonna slow me down." 1000 feet later, they aren't thinking about points anymore. any sensible pilot has already been thinking about landing options, and has a plan in mind. if it's a rock solid plan they might try circling. if it's not, they still might try circling, because it's more attractive than what's on the ground. the presence of a hard deck doesn't factor into the decision making process here.

for one reason or another, people will still attempt circles below it, guaranteed. So if it isn't correcting a safety related behavior, and we agree that it won't affect the scoresheet very much, what does a hard deck accomplish, and what's the point?

for me it's a different discussion from the finish line thing. i mentioned it earlier, but i'm throwing that aside, not least because it's still possible to have one. i keep responding because i don't think the hard deck solves any problem at all. what would be more effective would be a powerpoint presentation at the contest briefing about low saves, circling low, safety, and know areas of chancy landing options. maybe with a few pictures of broken gliders, nasty fields people had to squeeze into, and x-rays of a broken collarbone from a groundloop after a rushed forced landing. in particular there's a youtube video of a really last minute pattern and scary landing floating around. this sort of media is a better motivator than someone being reminded halfway through their pattern that they just lost all their points. i'll smash the SUA warning on downwind, going, "yeah great, thanks john, don't care right now."

Because that's what's going to happen. the majority of folks will get a SUA warning halfway through their pattern. they will have already committed to landing. is that the kind of distraction you want to introduce into the cockpit when there are much more pressing matters to attend to?

I think its a no-brainer.

it's hard to convey tone-of-voice online. Written with all due respect!

ND

On Saturday, February 3, 2018 at 1:41:45 PM UTC-5, John Cochrane wrote:
But it is amazing that when there are points on the table, stupid seems to blossom like mushrooms after a rain. And then vanish the moment we go home and points are off the table.

We've seen all that at wave camp.

I think we have many pilots with an odd, and I would say "defective" sense of risk management, one that says it's okay to stack on a lot more risk when flying for objectives. Encapsulated nicely by the guy you and I both know that says of final glides, in a nearly theatrical manner, "They are SUPPOSED to be dangerous!". The guy that thinks like this (and he has company) is going to find ways to put himself in dangerous situations under performance pressure regardless of rules. The high finish probably has been beneficial to safety... although I can think of three serious crashes just at one contest site that followed 500' or higher finishes.

In our club, we're putting extra effort on risk assessment / risk management, along with a "train like you fight, fight like you train" philosophy towards flying for objectives. I doubt very much that we will transform the sport, but perhaps we can plant some seeds for the future.

Evan Ludeman / T8

Nice story T8

It is interesting that over the last few decades, airlines have reduced crashes essentially to zero. Ok, not quite still, but orders of magnitude safer than any other means of transportation (trains, cars, busses) and probably walking too.

Meanwhile, gliders continue on our merry way, with something like 3 fatalities per year out of well less than 10,000 active pilots in the US. Far more than driving, with far fewer hours per year.

By all rights, this should be safer than power flying. The planes are simple and true mechanical failure extremely rare. No engine? No engine failure, no engine fire, no gas to run out of. We just eliminated a lot of GA power's main problems. It is never an emergency that the engine quit. You know the engine quit from the moment you got out of bed in the morning! It is perfectly predictable that you will need to find a place to land. We don't fly at night. We don't fly in fog, marginal IFR, low cloudbases, all the get-home-itis situations that tempt power pilots to trouble. We're not trying to get somewhere. There are no passengers to disappoint.

So just why is our accident rate so awful. Well, yes, you say, training and so forth. Except the accident rate among well trained pilots is pretty awful too. Think of all the famous pilots, or your many thousand hours friends who crashed on ridges, crashed in off field landings, ran in to mountains, broke up in lennies, and so forth.

One contrast. The airlines look hard at each crash, and take positive steps to do something about it. We sit in the back and mutter "what a bozo, I wouldn't do that." Another: flying an airliner looks like a lot less fun.

John Cochrane

On Sunday, February 4, 2018 at 10:49:36 AM UTC-5, John Cochrane wrote:
Nice story T8

It is interesting that over the last few decades, airlines have reduced crashes essentially to zero. Ok, not quite still, but orders of magnitude safer than any other means of transportation (trains, cars, busses) and probably walking too.

Meanwhile, gliders continue on our merry way, with something like 3 fatalities per year out of well less than 10,000 active pilots in the US. Far more than driving, with far fewer hours per year.

By all rights, this should be safer than power flying. The planes are simple and true mechanical failure extremely rare. No engine? No engine failure, no engine fire, no gas to run out of. We just eliminated a lot of GA power's main problems. It is never an emergency that the engine quit. You know the engine quit from the moment you got out of bed in the morning! It is perfectly predictable that you will need to find a place to land. We don't fly at night. We don't fly in fog, marginal IFR, low cloudbases, all the get-home-itis situations that tempt power pilots to trouble. We're not trying to get somewhere. There are no passengers to disappoint.

So just why is our accident rate so awful. Well, yes, you say, training and so forth. Except the accident rate among well trained pilots is pretty awful too. Think of all the famous pilots, or your many thousand hours friends who crashed on ridges, crashed in off field landings, ran in to mountains, broke up in lennies, and so forth.

One contrast. The airlines look hard at each crash, and take positive steps to do something about it. We sit in the back and mutter "what a bozo, I wouldn't do that." Another: flying an airliner looks like a lot less fun.

John Cochrane

When ACA decided "enough is enough" with the stupid ****, we got together and started to rethink safety from all angles. We looked at every single accident and near accident/incident across multiple dimensions (pilot experience, weather, terrain, etc.) As mentioned upstream, one of our single biggest findings was that too many pilots are cavalier about XC flight and outlandings, especially in areas of challenging terrain. Another obvious issue was guys flying in really challenging weather (which often comes along with good/great ridge days).

We're making strides in education, club guidelines, etc. But one thing I can see as an instructor is that the US does a LOT less in terms of formal XC training than what I've seen flying at clubs in Europe. For example, you can be a CFI-G in the US never having been outside gliding range of the home field. In the UK, at least Basic and Full instructors have to have a Silver badge (which is still fairly minimal, but at least it's something).

Again - as mentioned up thread - I really think it's a mistake that we don't think more about experience-level competition rather than glider class. What's perfectly safe for someone with decades of competition experience across a wide range of conditions may not be at all safe for someone who just got his Silver badge two weeks before the comp. Adjusting tasking and task parameters to be a bit more conservative for the newbies won't make it any less fun.

And to ND's comment above - it's one thing to take someone with a gold badge and 20 significant XC flights under his/her belt and put them up against a Category 1 pilot. But putting a 50 hour pilot with a freshly minted Silver into the mix is a recipe for disaster IMO.

I see a lot of invalid comparisons in this discussion.Â* How many
airliners or GA aircraft/pilots run ridges, fly mountain wave, etc.?Â*
And to say that, since only one crash occurred at a contest with a 500'
finish limit, makes that safer is ludicrous.Â* In the example stated
there were only 3 crashes total!Â* Anyone with a basic knowledge of
probability would not make any assumption based on a set of three
occurrences.

After 200 odd replies to this thread (is that some sort of record?),
nothing has been settled.Â* What a waste of time.

On 2/4/2018 8:49 AM, John Cochrane wrote:
Nice story T8

It is interesting that over the last few decades, airlines have reduced crashes essentially to zero. Ok, not quite still, but orders of magnitude safer than any other means of transportation (trains, cars, busses) and probably walking too.

Meanwhile, gliders continue on our merry way, with something like 3 fatalities per year out of well less than 10,000 active pilots in the US. Far more than driving, with far fewer hours per year.

By all rights, this should be safer than power flying. The planes are simple and true mechanical failure extremely rare. No engine? No engine failure, no engine fire, no gas to run out of. We just eliminated a lot of GA power's main problems. It is never an emergency that the engine quit. You know the engine quit from the moment you got out of bed in the morning! It is perfectly predictable that you will need to find a place to land. We don't fly at night. We don't fly in fog, marginal IFR, low cloudbases, all the get-home-itis situations that tempt power pilots to trouble. We're not trying to get somewhere. There are no passengers to disappoint.

So just why is our accident rate so awful. Well, yes, you say, training and so forth. Except the accident rate among well trained pilots is pretty awful too. Think of all the famous pilots, or your many thousand hours friends who crashed on ridges, crashed in off field landings, ran in to mountains, broke up in lennies, and so forth.

One contrast. The airlines look hard at each crash, and take positive steps to do something about it. We sit in the back and mutter "what a bozo, I wouldn't do that." Another: flying an airliner looks like a lot less fun.

John Cochrane

--
Dan, 5J