Hard Deck

Stories are often embellished. Flight logs not so much.

Flight logs of day/contest winners doing insanely stupid things and getting away with it on a regular basis would be more relevant to this discussion than also-rans making ill advised attempts to stay away from the ground. The stories ought to give you a good idea of where to start looking.

Evan Ludeman / T8

Are you reading the parallel discussion on SGP and what it takes to win there? Sadly the crash records don't lie, and we have lost many top pilots as well as many beginners over the years.
John cochrane

On Thursday, February 1, 2018 at 3:04:10 PM UTC-5, John Cochrane wrote:
Are you reading the parallel discussion on SGP and what it takes to win there? Sadly the crash records don't lie, and we have lost many top pilots as well as many beginners over the years.
John cochrane

This is directed to me?

Yes, of course I'm aware of all this. It's one reason I view this discussion as a little distracting from potentially larger issues. Your proposed rule is quite specific. I am simply asking: where are all the logs of the guys tempting fate below 500 agl, then going on to win? Your rule would have no discernible effect on anyone who does end up landing and it doesn't have an enormous effect on the guy in 9th place who gets back up after a very low save.

best,
Evan

On Thursday, February 1, 2018 at 11:18:45 AM UTC-5, John Cochrane wrote:
Lots of speculation that low altitude thermaling doesn't happen. I don't know if it's thermaling or misbehavior, but two good examples of actual very low altitude maneuvering in one of my last safety reports here
http://www.ssa.org/files/member/2013...ety_Report.pdf

Can you point to the specific examples in this report that would be affected by your proposed "rule"? It's possible I'm not reading the report correctly, but I'm having a hard time finding the examples (at least in this report) that correlate to the "hard charging guy determined to climb out from 400 feet".

P3

T8: The case for hard deck is not directed at winners, it's directed at everyone. The two examples -- two of many -- show pilots doing desperate low altitude things, pretty clearly not giving up and landing anywhere near soon enough. Were they thinking about points? I don't know, but their flight tracks sure look like it.
John Cochrane

as one of the guys in the report #7 - I believe I had given up on the task completely - way before the crash. I know for sure, points were not in my mind at all, promise.

I am not opposed the the Hard Deck - it will have no affect on my flying (my own is higher than 500 ft). I am just not so sure that most low thermaling happens because a person feels like they can continue lower and still be in the race.

We get together once a week here in NYC for Beer Night - "Hard Deck" was the topic of last evening - there wasn't much consensus but there was allot of conversation.

It seems to fall into 2 camps ... "Big Brother" vs "I am just keeping you safe from your own temptations" - both seem pretty reasonable.

An interesting point was "the hard deck would make me make decisions higher then I normally do" - at least for him, he thought it would help - even make him faster.

Feeling the obligation to explain yourself to your peers/mentor/family....... that's motivation enough for me - been there done that - goig to try not to do that nay more.

WH

This has been an interesting and pretty civil discussion involving primarily two polar opposites, personal freedoms and restrictive structures. Thanks to everyone who has posted here without flares that normally result when dealing with such a flammable topic lol.

One aspect I would like to introduce to the discussion is one of the elemental nature of racing or record setting. Racing/record setting are by nature games of managing risk for maximum achievement. The very fact that there are those who want to attempt to "manage" the risk of others flies in the face of the very nature of the sport. Are some "guidlines/disincentives" needed? Yes, but I feel we are trending into the realm of trying to micromanage the sport.

Second, historically, races are not only won by those flying the perfect flight, with decisions made that minimized risk and maximized speed, but ALSO days are won by those same pilots who chose or had to take a major calculated risk to win the day. Those who are trying to eliminate that side of the contest also eliminate a whole grouping of pilots who have developed the skill set for that method of fast flying. This new rule schema/trend that is developing, in essence, penalizes guys like moffat, reichman scott and streideck who knew how to fly very aggressively. Karl has commented on this thread saying basically the same thing. Do all of you "new generation" fliers who want a more regulated form of racing think his opinion is unqualified or out of touch with what sailplane racing is all about? I think many of you actually do and think that form of flying has no place in todays game.

I think much of this argument has been caused by the charactoristics of modern sailplanes themselves. Low saves, landing out, higher risk decisions were normative for racing in the older generation of competition. If you couldn't fly that way, at times, then you could not be competative. Today, performance is such that the game is more a game of micro decisions, not macro ones. When guys today are forced into macro decisions like a low save or even a land out for that matter, they are ill equiped to handle them. That's the true problem underlying a majority of the racing accidents today. Expanded rules implimentation does'nt really address the that fundamental problem but it definitely does redefine the nature of the race.

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.

"Today, performance"

It would be interesting to know if the fatality rate was the same when 1-26 were to only racing machines.

Our gliders have evolved allot in the past 5 decades - I know as technology advanced in a bunch of high speed sports ( cars, bobsleds, skiing....) the playing field and/or the rules had to adapt.

I am a libertarian at heart, except when my kids play a sport - then I hope the adults made the rules so the kids can play safe

I do not know the answer.

WH

Second, historically, races are not only won by those flying the perfect flight, with decisions made that minimized risk and maximized speed, but ALSO days are won by those same pilots who chose or had to take a major calculated risk to win the day.

Still not much of a racing pilot here, so take with grain of salt.

I wonder if this mixes two kinds of risk.

Strategic risk like 'I think there's lift in that blue hole. If it works I'm way ahead. If it doesn't I have a save my butt plan so I still get to try tomorrow'.

versus
Safety risk is like the above except if it doesn't work hopefully I'll only break the ship.

As a newbee, I am surrounded by really good pilots that do amazing things.
My goal is just to finish safely, learn, and enjoy. For me, it would be neat to hear a safety debrief on what sort of 'get to fly tomorrow plan' the person who just did one of those amazing things had.

I think that says no new rule, just a little peer pressure and maybe a learning experience.

No another note, the SUA's use the existing airspace feature in the panel. It is my understanding that this only supports vertical sides for airspace sections. If so, then I suspect to do much more that a few special cases, the feature would have to be modified to support sloping sides to better follow terrain with a reasonable number of airspace volumes?