Hard Deck

On Monday, February 5, 2018 at 6:11:40 PM UTC-5, John Cochrane wrote:
Bumping below as no response from any hard deck advocates:

JC: Sorry. I get tired of answering the same questions over and over

1) Lets define a typical contest area as a circle with a radius of 75 miles from the contest site. Lets assume this is Elmira. In this area the valley floors likely vary +/- 300ft and often that much within 10 miles of each other. Creating an SUA file to account for this would be nearly impossible.

JC: Even were this true, it is not a logical argument against a hard deck at Seniors, Hobbs, Uvalde, Perry, Cesar creek, Ionia, etc. etc. etc. where a single MSL altitude for most of the task area would suffice. I

2) This is one more thing that will cause people to be staring in the cockpit instead of outside. Spending time looking at computers WILL lead to not spending time looking at potential landing sites. This WILL lead to accidents that would otherwise not occur. The question is will the hard deck prevent more accidents than it will cause. This is a question that would likely take 10 years of data to analyze. In the meantime the rule may cause more deaths than it prevents.

JC: I love this old saw, it comes back again and again. We have to ban GPS, pilots will just be looking at their computers all the time! Dear friend, if you're down at 550 feet and you're looking slavishly at the pressure altitude on your flight recorder, you have a screw loose. Anyway, it's just one number. And every flight recorder has an audio warning of airspace violation. If at 550 feet you hear "ding! airspace" and you have to look down to wonder if you might be about to hit Class A, you have another screw loose..

3) The rule will penalize perfectly safe flying. I remember a 60 mile glide in dead air coming back to Mifflin while in the back seat of KS. Detoured to Jacks a few miles west of the airport and arrived about half way up the ridge (250ft+/-). Minimum sink speed and on top of the ridge in 30 seconds, home for the day win. If the SUA had a 300ft hard deck in the valley we would have crossed under it on the way to the ridge save. Result - landout.

JC: treated many times before. Again, not a logical argument against trying it at flatland sites. Already stated that in a mifflin situation you carve a hole for ridge flying.

Undoubtedly you have other reasons not to want to do it, but these are not logical ones.

John cochrane

John,

It's not a question of staring incessantly at your screen. it's about having a SUA warning go "BUUH-REEEEE! ...AIRSPACE..." when you are at 500 feet (ostensibly 3/4 of the way through downwind). it's a legitimate distraction, no question.

Descending through 500 AGL on downwind:

"BUUH-REEEEEE!"

"****! was that my gear warning??" *cycles gear back UP unknowingly*

It sounds silly, but you know in a tense moment we do stupid things and get confused. i once saw a guy land in the same field as me, come to a stop, and pull his gear up.

i know harris hill is just one site, but there are many with similarities. to your point about hobbs perry et cet. flatland becomes simple. but at sites with slope-y terrain, why is it OK to cirlce within 500 feet of high ground with a valley close-by, but not down in the valleys? the hard deck doesn't protect you from stall/spin at sloping sites like NY,PA,VA,VT,UT,CA,NV if you're low over high ground. and there are lots of locations where you can be circling at 400 feet over a hilltop field, with a valley close by. copy and paste this link below and look what's 1.7 miles southwest of my marked location. i circled at 500 feet above the field i have marked. That's no different in terms of stall spin, than doing it in the valley. the only difference is that if i lost 100 feet i could glide out to the valley and be over an airport. but a spin right there coulda had me sleeping with the fishes:

,1355m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m9!1m2!2m1!1scostas+airport!3m5!1s0 x0:0x0!7e2!8m2!3d42.2037464!4d-77.111644!5m1!1e4

the hard deck does nothing to protect you in this situation. so i question it's overall effectiveness. if you look at a valley fog satellite loop for somewhere like harris hill, you'll realize just what a small percentage of the contest site you are covering with the hard deck in the half-dozen states i mention above. it leaves plenty of opportunities for low circling over landable non-ridge terrain.



but let's go back to flat sites. those places generally have a wide selection of large fields. this year at hobbs i landed in a field that was a no brainer in terms of size and obstructions, but it was SOFT. late in the day when it's calm, i think you'd find people cirlcing low to stay out of the field, hard deck or not. at flat land sites where the options are poor, (Hobbs, west) you could find people circling low to stay out of nasty terrain in what i'll call panic mode. it happened this year in fact.

My point isn't that a hard deck is stupid, or for nancies, or even that "this is another silly cochrane rule" (forgive me for that one, and please take it in the spirit in which it was intended). that IS how i felt at first, truly. but now, having considered the hard deck from many angles, and what it does/doesn't do, i don't think it prevents the circumstances people end up in, or their low altitude behavior. i think it just punishes them for it.. but as a punishment it doesn't prevent that behavior in the moment or even in the future.


i reiterate, 500 feet is quite low. but i've done it under certain conditions. a hard deck won't stop people from making low circles.

On Monday, February 5, 2018 at 5:11:40 PM UTC-6, John Cochrane wrote:
Bumping below as no response from any hard deck advocates:

JC: Sorry. I get tired of answering the same questions over and over

1) Lets define a typical contest area as a circle with a radius of 75 miles from the contest site. Lets assume this is Elmira. In this area the valley floors likely vary +/- 300ft and often that much within 10 miles of each other. Creating an SUA file to account for this would be nearly impossible.

JC: Even were this true, it is not a logical argument against a hard deck at Seniors, Hobbs, Uvalde, Perry, Cesar creek, Ionia, etc. etc. etc. where a single MSL altitude for most of the task area would suffice.

I think I see your intent, John, but I think you oversimplify "flatland" a bit too much.

Taking Hobbs and Uvalde as examples of your "flatland", one single MSL altitude would not be a good idea. Hobbs is at 3707 MSL. Big Spring is often used, and it is at 2573, or about 1100 feet lower. Portales is at 4078, so a bit over 300 feet higher, and about 1500 feet higher than the low area.

Using Uvalde, at 942 MSL, with Sonora at 2140 and Uno Mas at 380, again, over 1500 elevation difference between the low and high ends of the task area.

Not saying it can't be done, but it will not be a simple "one altitude MSL hard deck" unless it is above normal tow release altitude over the low ground to keep it high enough to eliminate low circling for points over the high ground. We may not have much contour change here in the center of the US, but we are not level. :-)

I do applaud your analysis of the data and attempts to find ways to make cross country racing safer. I wish there was a simple answer, but I don't think a hard deck is acceptable even as a complex answer.

My .02
Steve Leonard
Flat Lander (but not a Flat Earther)

On Monday, February 5, 2018 at 6:11:40 PM UTC-5, John Cochrane wrote:
Bumping below as no response from any hard deck advocates:

JC: Sorry. I get tired of answering the same questions over and over

1) Lets define a typical contest area as a circle with a radius of 75 miles from the contest site. Lets assume this is Elmira. In this area the valley floors likely vary +/- 300ft and often that much within 10 miles of each other. Creating an SUA file to account for this would be nearly impossible.

JC: Even were this true, it is not a logical argument against a hard deck at Seniors, Hobbs, Uvalde, Perry, Cesar creek, Ionia, etc. etc. etc. where a single MSL altitude for most of the task area would suffice. I

2) This is one more thing that will cause people to be staring in the cockpit instead of outside. Spending time looking at computers WILL lead to not spending time looking at potential landing sites. This WILL lead to accidents that would otherwise not occur. The question is will the hard deck prevent more accidents than it will cause. This is a question that would likely take 10 years of data to analyze. In the meantime the rule may cause more deaths than it prevents.

JC: I love this old saw, it comes back again and again. We have to ban GPS, pilots will just be looking at their computers all the time! Dear friend, if you're down at 550 feet and you're looking slavishly at the pressure altitude on your flight recorder, you have a screw loose. Anyway, it's just one number. And every flight recorder has an audio warning of airspace violation. If at 550 feet you hear "ding! airspace" and you have to look down to wonder if you might be about to hit Class A, you have another screw loose..

3) The rule will penalize perfectly safe flying. I remember a 60 mile glide in dead air coming back to Mifflin while in the back seat of KS. Detoured to Jacks a few miles west of the airport and arrived about half way up the ridge (250ft+/-). Minimum sink speed and on top of the ridge in 30 seconds, home for the day win. If the SUA had a 300ft hard deck in the valley we would have crossed under it on the way to the ridge save. Result - landout.

JC: treated many times before. Again, not a logical argument against trying it at flatland sites. Already stated that in a mifflin situation you carve a hole for ridge flying.

Undoubtedly you have other reasons not to want to do it, but these are not logical ones.

John cochrane

John,

like it or not/agree or not,

i also see pilots cirlcing at 550 feet, pulling and milking like hell, maneuvering aggressively, close to stall trying to stop themselves from getting DQ'd by nicking,or sliding down into the hard-deck, further provoking an impending stall close to terrain. i know, it sounds absurd, but people will do it, flat land or not.

it's those unintended consequences... i think the hard deck creates some problems, and solves none.

ND

On Tuesday, February 6, 2018 at 10:55:32 AM UTC-5, John Cochrane wrote:
T8: Part of what's being tested every time we go XC soaring (never mind competition) is the ability to assess and manage risk. I relish this. If you take this out of the game... well, it's no longer the same game.


Are you f...ing kidding? You voluntarily enjoy the ability to assess and manage physical risk.. and by definition to occasionally fail with potentially fatal results? What is this, aviation or climbing Mt. Everest?

Anyway, fear not dear T8. Even with a hard deck, you will still be flying a motorless aircraft, and there will be plenty of opportunity for you to scare yourself silly even though you no longer will get contest points for it. We'll even still give you points for flying in clouds, through thunderstorms, over unlandable terrain, shoot mountain passes with 10 feet to spare, and so forth. And the risk of losing points at 500 or 1000 feet might still be enough to keep you awake, though the hard ground won't give you quite the rush it used to.

I mean, really, of all the illogic on this thread, the idea that no longer giving contest points for what a pilot chooses to do under 500 or 1000 feet AGL, removes all risk from motorless aviation, so the pilot no longer has to "assess and manage risk" is the most ludicrous. You might as well argue that we remove parachutes, so pilots get more of the adrenaline rush of assessing and managing risks.

Oppose a hard deck if you will, but please bring some faint common sense, thought and logic to the discussion

John Cochrane

No, I'm not kidding. However I have (unintentionally) exposed your rather considerable confirmation bias.

I was responding to Jon's earlier stated idea to create a hard deck thousands of feet in the air.

What I relish is the fact that it's all on me as PIC. I have to be disciplined enough to know when to say "screw this, I'm landing", or "screw this, I'm at Tatum bound for Portales, it's blue, there's cirrus, I'm unfamiliar with the terrain, it looks like the moon, I'm out of my element, I'm fatigued, I'm going to stay with the clouds and wait" (day 1, 2013 15s). I relish the fact that I know I am bigger & stronger than my own ego. That day my score sucked but the glider was safely in the box, still shiny. My tie down neighbor's... not so much.

Back to the 500' thing: at 500' over a landable field, I'm landing. Duh. What the **** is going to happen in the 120 seconds between 500' and 250' that didn't happen in the last half hour? With about 99% probability... nothing at all.

ND: The smart thing to do if the nannies do have their way is leave all that airspace out of your nav equipment and just fly your best game. You tag the airspace, well sucks to be you.

I don't think we need the rule, I will oppose it if asked. My prediction is: if such a rule were adopted, it won't be 500' for very darned long.

Evan Ludeman / T8

On Tuesday, February 6, 2018 at 1:15:10 PM UTC-5, Tango Eight wrote:
On Tuesday, February 6, 2018 at 10:55:32 AM UTC-5, John Cochrane wrote:
T8: Part of what's being tested every time we go XC soaring (never mind competition) is the ability to assess and manage risk. I relish this. If you take this out of the game... well, it's no longer the same game.


Are you f...ing kidding? You voluntarily enjoy the ability to assess and manage physical risk.. and by definition to occasionally fail with potentially fatal results? What is this, aviation or climbing Mt. Everest?

Anyway, fear not dear T8. Even with a hard deck, you will still be flying a motorless aircraft, and there will be plenty of opportunity for you to scare yourself silly even though you no longer will get contest points for it. We'll even still give you points for flying in clouds, through thunderstorms, over unlandable terrain, shoot mountain passes with 10 feet to spare, and so forth. And the risk of losing points at 500 or 1000 feet might still be enough to keep you awake, though the hard ground won't give you quite the rush it used to.

I mean, really, of all the illogic on this thread, the idea that no longer giving contest points for what a pilot chooses to do under 500 or 1000 feet AGL, removes all risk from motorless aviation, so the pilot no longer has to "assess and manage risk" is the most ludicrous. You might as well argue that we remove parachutes, so pilots get more of the adrenaline rush of assessing and managing risks.

Oppose a hard deck if you will, but please bring some faint common sense, thought and logic to the discussion

John Cochrane

No, I'm not kidding. However I have (unintentionally) exposed your rather considerable confirmation bias.

I was responding to Jon's earlier stated idea to create a hard deck thousands of feet in the air.

What I relish is the fact that it's all on me as PIC. I have to be disciplined enough to know when to say "screw this, I'm landing", or "screw this, I'm at Tatum bound for Portales, it's blue, there's cirrus, I'm unfamiliar with the terrain, it looks like the moon, I'm out of my element, I'm fatigued, I'm going to stay with the clouds and wait" (day 1, 2013 15s). I relish the fact that I know I am bigger & stronger than my own ego. That day my score sucked but the glider was safely in the box, still shiny. My tie down neighbor's... not so much.

Back to the 500' thing: at 500' over a landable field, I'm landing. Duh. What the **** is going to happen in the 120 seconds between 500' and 250' that didn't happen in the last half hour? With about 99% probability... nothing at all.

ND: The smart thing to do if the nannies do have their way is leave all that airspace out of your nav equipment and just fly your best game. You tag the airspace, well sucks to be you.

I don't think we need the rule, I will oppose it if asked. My prediction is: if such a rule were adopted, it won't be 500' for very darned long.

Evan Ludeman / T8

agreed! i almost wrote that i wasn't going to upload the SUA file unless absolutely mandated.

On Monday, February 5, 2018 at 6:11:40 PM UTC-5, John Cochrane wrote:
Bumping below as no response from any hard deck advocates:

JC: Sorry. I get tired of answering the same questions over and over

Its been a long thread but I think these are all new points / questions.

1) Lets define a typical contest area as a circle with a radius of 75 miles from the contest site. Lets assume this is Elmira. In this area the valley floors likely vary +/- 300ft and often that much within 10 miles of each other. Creating an SUA file to account for this would be nearly impossible.

JC: Even were this true, it is not a logical argument against a hard deck at Seniors, Hobbs, Uvalde, Perry, Cesar creek, Ionia, etc. etc. etc. where a single MSL altitude for most of the task area would suffice.

See Steve Leonard's post. Even over "flatlands" turn point / terrain can very by hundreds (even more than a thousand) feet. Also, are we going to have some sites with hard deck and others without?


2) This is one more thing that will cause people to be staring in the cockpit instead of outside. Spending time looking at computers WILL lead to not spending time looking at potential landing sites. This WILL lead to accidents that would otherwise not occur. The question is will the hard deck prevent more accidents than it will cause. This is a question that would likely take 10 years of data to analyze. In the meantime the rule may cause more deaths than it prevents.

JC: I love this old saw, it comes back again and again. We have to ban GPS, pilots will just be looking at their computers all the time! Dear friend, if you're down at 550 feet and you're looking slavishly at the pressure altitude on your flight recorder, you have a screw loose. Anyway, it's just one number. And every flight recorder has an audio warning of airspace violation. If at 550 feet you hear "ding! airspace" and you have to look down to wonder if you might be about to hit Class A, you have another screw loose..

Except now you have people looking down at their flight computers when close to terrain (likely under 2 minutes until you need to climb out or land). Take your Mifflin carve out example. ****, I'm going to hit the hard deck, but if I fly towards the ridge there won't be a hard deck and I'll do that. Now I'm at the ridge, its not working and I've left myself no options to land.


3) The rule will penalize perfectly safe flying. I remember a 60 mile glide in dead air coming back to Mifflin while in the back seat of KS. Detoured to Jacks a few miles west of the airport and arrived about half way up the ridge (250ft+/-). Minimum sink speed and on top of the ridge in 30 seconds, home for the day win. If the SUA had a 300ft hard deck in the valley we would have crossed under it on the way to the ridge save. Result - landout.

JC: treated many times before. Again, not a logical argument against trying it at flatland sites. Already stated that in a mifflin situation you carve a hole for ridge flying.

Undoubtedly you have other reasons not to want to do it, but these are not logical ones.

Nope, I just think this adds significant complexity without any data supporting it that it adds in any way to safety. I can't say I follow every accident religiously, but the last stall / spin into terrain from low level that comes to mind recently is more than 10 years ago (Peter Masak at Mifflin) which your proposal would not have prevented. I really enjoy alot of your economics work - you're probably one of the top center-right economists of your generation. But you base that work on data, and I just don't think you have any data to support your proposal other than "I think this is a good idea." Thats the nonsensical argument Paul Krugman puts into the NYT on a regular basis .


John cochrane

I don't think we need the rule, I will oppose it if asked. My prediction is: if such a rule were adopted, it won't be 500' for very darned long.

As you aptly point out, and John certainly knows, once you've implemented a regulation it only begets further and more asinine regulation. Reading John's academic work you'd have no idea it was the same John Cochrane who's proposing this new (un)safety rule.

John's academic work is all about how poorly crafted regulations give bad incentives. Regulation isn't about "more" or "less" it's about "smart" vs. "dumb", the latter often giving bad incentives.
John

On Tuesday, February 6, 2018 at 10:15:10 AM UTC-8, Tango Eight wrote:
On Tuesday, February 6, 2018 at 10:55:32 AM UTC-5, John Cochrane wrote:
T8: Part of what's being tested every time we go XC soaring (never mind competition) is the ability to assess and manage risk. I relish this. If you take this out of the game... well, it's no longer the same game.


Are you f...ing kidding? You voluntarily enjoy the ability to assess and manage physical risk.. and by definition to occasionally fail with potentially fatal results? What is this, aviation or climbing Mt. Everest?

Anyway, fear not dear T8. Even with a hard deck, you will still be flying a motorless aircraft, and there will be plenty of opportunity for you to scare yourself silly even though you no longer will get contest points for it. We'll even still give you points for flying in clouds, through thunderstorms, over unlandable terrain, shoot mountain passes with 10 feet to spare, and so forth. And the risk of losing points at 500 or 1000 feet might still be enough to keep you awake, though the hard ground won't give you quite the rush it used to.

I mean, really, of all the illogic on this thread, the idea that no longer giving contest points for what a pilot chooses to do under 500 or 1000 feet AGL, removes all risk from motorless aviation, so the pilot no longer has to "assess and manage risk" is the most ludicrous. You might as well argue that we remove parachutes, so pilots get more of the adrenaline rush of assessing and managing risks.

Oppose a hard deck if you will, but please bring some faint common sense, thought and logic to the discussion

John Cochrane

No, I'm not kidding. However I have (unintentionally) exposed your rather considerable confirmation bias.

I was responding to Jon's earlier stated idea to create a hard deck thousands of feet in the air.

What I relish is the fact that it's all on me as PIC. I have to be disciplined enough to know when to say "screw this, I'm landing", or "screw this, I'm at Tatum bound for Portales, it's blue, there's cirrus, I'm unfamiliar with the terrain, it looks like the moon, I'm out of my element, I'm fatigued, I'm going to stay with the clouds and wait" (day 1, 2013 15s). I relish the fact that I know I am bigger & stronger than my own ego. That day my score sucked but the glider was safely in the box, still shiny. My tie down neighbor's... not so much.

Back to the 500' thing: at 500' over a landable field, I'm landing. Duh. What the **** is going to happen in the 120 seconds between 500' and 250' that didn't happen in the last half hour? With about 99% probability... nothing at all.

ND: The smart thing to do if the nannies do have their way is leave all that airspace out of your nav equipment and just fly your best game. You tag the airspace, well sucks to be you.

I don't think we need the rule, I will oppose it if asked. My prediction is: if such a rule were adopted, it won't be 500' for very darned long.

Evan Ludeman / T8

Well, this discussion has been quite the education for me. Now this thread is only a sampling of about 10 pilots, but many among those consider taking occasional, considerable risks up to an including imminent chance of death part of soaring competition, because it has always been that way and they like it. I personally know a few pilots with similar attitudes towards the sport, but it is a small minority among the pilot community that I fly with..

An interesting side line to the discussion is the notion that safety is a binary quantity: you either are, or are not safe in a certain situation. I view it much more as a continuum from almost safe to damned dangerous. It stems directly from the margin for error allowed at any moment. That margin for error must include errors due to pilot skill, weather conditions, other aircraft, and the unknown unknowns. You can affect only the first of those. If the margin for error is large (high, clear benign weather, etc.) the you are relatively safe. If the margin for error is allowed to go very low (circling at 400 ft over a field you've never landed in) the slightest of errors of any kind - not just pilot skill - can break through the margin to calamity.

Is circling at 2000 ft safe? Relatively. At 1000? not as much. At 500? a lot of things can go wrong. When stories are told of circling at 100 ft but it's safe because you are on final to a field - was this a field you landed in before? have any of the conditions changed? Is the wind gradient exactly as it was 3 years ago when last you were here?

There is also an attempt to conflate the nanny state with competition rules.. This is specious. I am against helmet laws for motorcycles, even though I wear one every time I get on a bike. It's your brain. But in an organized motorcycle race, helmets are absolutely required. That isn't a "nanny state", and I'm not against it. Some motorcycle racers will argue they don't want to wear a helmet - its hot, gets in the way of vision, they don't wear one when they ride on the street, and they aren't going to ride any differently. Nevertheless it is required. I'm against a hard deck and any other unnecessary rules for soaring flight. But in soaring competition, as in every other form of competition, there needs to be limits on the worst tolerable behavior, not for that individual but for others who do not share their values, so that rewards are not proportional to bodily risk taken.

"the ability to assess and manage risk" has but one final arbiter: the failure to manage it resulting in mayhem. The measuring stick for this is: are there more accidents in competition than in normal cross country flight? I believe the answer is yes, meaning the risks are either higher or not being managed. Is the accident rate in competition acceptable? I don't believe it is, as long as it is higher than non-competition flying. I gather that many of the participants posting here disagree, as most seem to oppose any rules changes that might affect safety. "Risk" in the above quote ought to be the risk that you might have to slow down to maintain adequate altitude, or might land out at a known good site with plenty of time to do an ordinary, proper pattern and land. It should not be risk of putting the glider in an unknown field in unknown weather conditions while severely stressed and pressed for time.

OK, my iPad makes it a PITA to do multiple quotes, this site adds to that.

I have a 22yo son, a 20yo daughter, I also have a wife coming up on 25 years of marriage although I have known her coming up on 30 years.
I have no death wish.
What do you win in a glider worlds......a Frikkin trophy?
Sheesh, the players on the losing team at the US football super ball get what, $50K? Today, a LIFETIME of glider contests won't even pay for entry fees let alone travel, etc.

Money is not the goal here.
Group recognition is not really worth it.
It is more personal goals.

As I have stated before, "rules can't fix stupid".
I will hasten to add that the recent death of Tomas is a sad thing, not what I am talking about. No, I don't want emails slamming me about that, I have posted my feelings here on that as well as PM's and emails.

I don't know what the answer is, obviously there is an issue. Sponsors into a a sport may change peeps ideas of what is acceptable.
In a way, I sorta have an issue with this. We need to fix the underlying issue before peeps deem it required to drop the safe standards even more.
Yes, I have spoken to "problem" pilots in a US contest.
Yes, I have spoken to CD's in a US contest about "problem pilots".
Yes, I have talked to other contestants in a US contest (to see if I was wrong, right, maybe a bit too sensitive).
Has anyone else here done so???

Pretty easy to sit behind a keyboard and spout stuff but not doing anything to help fix it.

Just my $0.02...........

PS, rules don't fix stupid, regardless of why stupid happened. Sometimes things happen, look for the pattern, either in the pilot or what they may they feel to gain doing (20/20 hindsight) stupid stuff.

Nuff said.......