Finish lines

In article ,
Fred Mueller wrote:

Now lets say you've arrived over the
end of the field opposite the direction of landing and you're at 400
feet and 55 knots. You have been sweating the glide for miles and to
land straight ahead into traffic you are now in a high energy situation
to get down and stopped without rolling too far into the oncoming
traffic.

Going downwind at 400 ft at the departure end of the field?

That's 200 ft higher and a 180 degree turn better off than the rope
breaks that we routinely expect pre-solo pilots to cope with!

--
Bruce | 41.1670S | \ spoken | -+-
Hoult | 174.8263E | /\ here. | ----------O----------

JJ,

I am going to respond privately to you with specifics. I apologize to
the group for 'teasing' you with a statement and then refusing to reveal
the information that proves it.

Larry





"John Sinclair" wrote in message
:

There have actually been some with exactly the scenario
that Kirk
posited.

Please provide us with the details of these finish
cylinder accidents. I'm not aware of any.
JJ

01-- Zero One wrote:

I am going to respond privately to you with specifics. I apologize to
the group for 'teasing' you with a statement and then refusing to reveal
the information that proves it.

Of course you will sanitize them and then let the heathen feast on them too,
I suppose?


Jack

At 05:30 06 May 2005, Marc Ramsey wrote:
Andy Blackburn wrote:
My point was I don't think it's a great idea to be
so cavalier about low altitude spins. The 500' cylinder
encourages an aggressive, ballistic pull up to reach
the finish altitude for pilots on a marginal glide.
The gate doesn't - you just land. The fact that someone
got away with a spin at 400' is not a confidence-builder
for me.

Never mind, I keep forgetting to just stay out of this.
I'd have a bit
more respect for your position if y'all would quit
trying to convince
people its more dangerous to finish at 500 feet than
at 50, but it
really doesn't matter. *I* have margin for error at
500 feet, I have
none at 50 or 100, tis adequate reason for me, clearly
it isn't enough
for you, 'nuf said.

I do wish we could talk about this without the ad hominem
commentary.

I never said the you have more energy at 50 feet than
500'/1sm. I believe I pointed out long ago that 500'
and 1sm at 60kts is the equivalent in energy of 50'
over the airport and 100 kts for most modern sailplanes
or +/-350' over the airport at best glide. It's a difference
in energy to be sure. Everyone stipulated to that point
long ago.

The argument is about the more subtle points regarding
decision making, heads-down piloting and traffic management.
The cylindre proponents seem to deny ANY issues with
the cyliner and come back to altitude as the ONLY safety
factor on final glides and therefore conclude that
the cylinder must be HANDS DOWN TOTALLY SAFE. Some
of us would like to point out that it is more complex
than that.

I have never stated that the cylinder is less safe
than the gate - rather that the biggest threat to safety
is simplistic arguments that lead to flat assertions.

9B

From an energy standpoint there is no problem at least not a low energy
problem, there is now a high energy problem. Imagine yourself at 400
feet on the downwind threshold. Where are you going to land on that
runway? Now imagine a half dozen or more gliders coming at you landing
from the opposite direction and some of those gliders intend to land
long. If there are few or no other gliders in the pattern there is no
problem. At a contest with 50-75 gliders all finishing within a very
short period of time, the problem is very real.

FM

Bruce Hoult wrote:
In article ,
Fred Mueller wrote:


Now lets say you've arrived over the
end of the field opposite the direction of landing and you're at 400
feet and 55 knots. You have been sweating the glide for miles and to
land straight ahead into traffic you are now in a high energy situation
to get down and stopped without rolling too far into the oncoming
traffic.


Going downwind at 400 ft at the departure end of the field?

That's 200 ft higher and a 180 degree turn better off than the rope
breaks that we routinely expect pre-solo pilots to cope with!

wrote:
The finish line is a magnifying glass. The sins committed there are
repeated throughout the soaring day. Only difference is, everyone sees
and comments on them. The same and new errors will be made in the
finish cylinder, but out of sight of the peanut gallery. This isn't
safer; it just seems safer - a three-monkeys approach to safety. (And
yes, while you have more altitude under you, you've also increased the
likelihood and severity of collision.)

There are differences, I like having altitude under me, I like having
the time to go through my checklist, then make a proper pattern after
the finish. It is my belief that the likelihood of collision is greater
with a finish gate, particularly when people are having to "hook" the gate.

In a previous post, I pointed out how little it costs in points to opt
out of a 50-foot finish. Eight points max.

I don't care enough about winning to worry about a few points here and
there, so yes, I almost always go through finish gates at 500 to 1000
feet. Of course, I've finished second in two regionals in the past 3
years, by 1 and 35 points (but both used cylinders).

On the other hand, the
cylinder represents some known problems (head-down piloting) and
unknown problems (traffic separation at the cylinder wall and
procedures after the clock stops).

This will sound a bit snarky, but perhaps you need to adjust/practice
your finish cylinder technique. I don't find any more need to fly head
down than I do with a gate. Every contest that I've flown centered the
cylinder on an easily visible landmark. I set my glide software to
arrive one mile out at the desired altitude (I personally set it to
arrive at 500 feet above the floor), fly straight at the landmark, and
glance at the computer once in a while to make sure I'm still above
glide slope. My software beeps when I cross the cylinder, doesn't yours?

Traffic issues at the cylinder wall are, in my mind, not much different
than a gate, except there is a lot more time to shift gears and sequence
for landing.

Just because something "seems" safer, doesn't mean it is. And while we
blunt skulls may seem unreasonable in our commitment to the status quo,
some of us would rather deal with the risks we understand than journey
off into the unknown.

You are taking a legacy finishing procedure, clearly optimal for the
optical timing techniques used in the past, and trying to force it into
the GPS age. Sometimes the status quo needs to be shaken up a bit.
And, there are now quite a few of us new guys around who have little
experience with finish gates, and don't much like them.

I and others have pointed out, in this and other threads, some of those
variables. I've seen mixed results in how these questions have been
addressed. One thing is certain... any finish is a high-density,
high-risk environment, and my own experience is that I spend far too
much of my time looking at instruments while approaching the cylinder
for my own comfort (and for yours). When I call four miles, I want my
head out of the cockpit 99% percent of the time. This simply isn't
realistic with the cylinder. We need to fully understand where the
benefit of lower density outweighs the effects of greater pilot
distraction. A blue day AST or TAT raises the potential density of the
finish, and thus the importance of heads up piloting.

My answer to this is "bull". I'm not distracted and I don't have my
head down. I thought it important to work out a finish strategy that
gives me maximum heads-up time. I've even gone so far as to modify my
glide software to provide audio indication that my final glide is
trending above/below the desired slope. Perhaps you should insist that
your software vendor do the same.

I could be converted. But it's clear the cylinder hasn't been
adequately vetted.

The finish gate was vetted for use in optically timed environments. We
no longer do that.

There's too large a penalty for rolling finishes,

I agree, that needs to be worked on.

which means pilots will be trying all sorts of tricks to clip the
bottom, flying at low speeds into high-speed, high-density traffic.

I think we can agree that stupid pilots will do stupid things,
independent of the rules.

And
there's no standardization for pattern entry based on energy after
entering the cylinder.

Most of us have years of experience trying to figure out how to land
with other aircraft milling around in the vicinity. We use a 2 mile
1000 foot cylinder at Minden, precisely because finishing gliders must
integrate with non-contest traffic, including fire bombers, jets, and
student glider pilots. We have not had a single problem with this.

For instance, at the Std Class Nats in Montague I didn't begin dumping
water until after I pierced the finish cylinder. After finishing, I
would pull up to 800 feet agl, open the dumps, and wander around the
vicinity of the IP until I reached pattern altitude. After all, why
should I take the performance penalty of dumping water if I have
several minutes after the finish to lighten the glider before landing?
Multiply this by 10, introduce variables in speed, altitude, wing
loading, and pattern planning, and the IP becomes an increasingly
dangerous environment.

This is silly. I pull the dump handle when I make my four mile call,
using a gate or cylinder. One experience landing with partially dumped
water was enough to convince me that I needed to be consistent about this.

Where does this leave the guy who has difficulty judging whether he
ought to light the burners or break off for a rolling finish? Or a
pilot who cannot execute a brief 2-g pull and 180 degree turn to final?
How will they deal with inserting themselves into a much more dynamic
pattern with several other gliders, with lots of opportunity to raise
the level of confusion?

The guy will learn the same way a lot of us did, by trial and error,
plus admonishments and suggestions from the more experienced. As for
the brief 2-G pull and 180 degree turn, it is no problem when it works,
it is only a problem when there are distractions or impairments in play.
At 500 feet, I can screw up, and still have a decent chance of
recovering in time to land in one piece. At 100 feet, I'm likely to do
the lawn dart act.

Safety is my primary concern. Which is to say, if I believed the
cylinder was inherently safer, I'd be writing in equal volume in favor.
But it's clearly not the cure-all some propose. At best, not yet.

We can agree to disagree on this. Frankly, I think you finish gate
advocates have already lost the argument, you just don't know it yet...

Well Marc, you, at least, win points for a well-reasoned response. I
appreciate it. And we'll continue to disagree I suspect... The most
important unanswered question in my book is the huge discrepency in
speed we see at the cylinder wall and not at the finish line. One
advantage of having been at this a few years is I recognize how much
this smacks of the old start gate and the very real dangers is
presented. I've seen far more close calls and accidents in the start
gate than at the finish line, the result of the large differences in
speeds among starters all trying to cross a line at or just below 5,000
feet agl. Go back and look at my model of the finish cylinder.

http://users.adelphia.net/~cocallag

Traffic is all arriving in a shallow arc at about the same altitude
with as much as a 100 knot delta in speeds. Even more if gliders stop
to thermal near the cylinder. This simply does not happen at the finish
line.

wrote:
Marc,

The finish line is a magnifying glass. The sins committed there are
repeated throughout the soaring day. Only difference is, everyone
sees
and comments on them. The same and new errors will be made in the
finish cylinder, but out of sight of the peanut gallery. This isn't
safer; it just seems safer - a three-monkeys approach to safety. (And
yes, while you have more altitude under you, you've also increased
the
likelihood and severity of collision.)

In a previous post, I pointed out how little it costs in points to
opt
out of a 50-foot finish. Eight points max. On the other hand, the
cylinder represents some known problems (head-down piloting) and
unknown problems (traffic separation at the cylinder wall and
procedures after the clock stops).

Just because something "seems" safer, doesn't mean it is. And while
we
blunt skulls may seem unreasonable in our commitment to the status
quo,
some of us would rather deal with the risks we understand than
journey
off into the unknown.

I and others have pointed out, in this and other threads, some of
those
variables. I've seen mixed results in how these questions have been
addressed. One thing is certain... any finish is a high-density,
high-risk environment, and my own experience is that I spend far too
much of my time looking at instruments while approaching the cylinder
for my own comfort (and for yours). When I call four miles, I want my
head out of the cockpit 99% percent of the time. This simply isn't
realistic with the cylinder. We need to fully understand where the
benefit of lower density outweighs the effects of greater pilot
distraction. A blue day AST or TAT raises the potential density of
the
finish, and thus the importance of heads up piloting.

I could be converted. But it's clear the cylinder hasn't been
adequately vetted. There's too large a penalty for rolling finishes,
which means pilots will be trying all sorts of tricks to clip the
bottom, flying at low speeds into high-speed, high-density traffic.
And
there's no standardization for pattern entry based on energy after
entering the cylinder.

For instance, at the Std Class Nats in Montague I didn't begin
dumping
water until after I pierced the finish cylinder. After finishing, I
would pull up to 800 feet agl, open the dumps, and wander around the
vicinity of the IP until I reached pattern altitude. After all, why
should I take the performance penalty of dumping water if I have
several minutes after the finish to lighten the glider before
landing?
Multiply this by 10, introduce variables in speed, altitude, wing
loading, and pattern planning, and the IP becomes an increasingly
dangerous environment.

Where does this leave the guy who has difficulty judging whether he
ought to light the burners or break off for a rolling finish? Or a
pilot who cannot execute a brief 2-g pull and 180 degree turn to
final?
How will they deal with inserting themselves into a much more dynamic
pattern with several other gliders, with lots of opportunity to raise
the level of confusion?

The cylinder has its uses, especially for open-ended MATs where
racing
is likely to take place in all four quadrants, but there's much
homework yet to be done. Yes, you remove one highly visible maneuver
-
one the vast the majority of pilots can safely and successfully
execute
and introuduce a fistfull of unknowns that will affect everyone.
Don't
like the finish line? Can't judge energy? Can't execute the manuever?
Don't light the burners. Why must I be exposed to what I believe is a
potentially dangerous environment without choice because a handful of
pilots are promulgating a "solution" that hasn't yet received due
diligence (amply demonstrated by its proponents' inability to
adequately address well-reasoned safety concerns)?

I suppose the thing that irks me is not so much that this is a
"lowest
common denominator" solution, rather that it will have very little
impact on safety. We'll improve things for a few pilots, yet expose
all
pilots to other safety concerns. And while we've netted a few hundred
feet of cushion beneath those pilots who need it, that doesn't
improve
their ability to stay out of trouble elsewhere on course. It simply
defers ignorance out of sight of the home drome.

By the way, when was the last time you saw someone thermalling half a
mile from the finish line? Or intentionally busting a gaggle at 140
knots? These aren't unreasonable scenarios and require only the same
lack of judgement displayed by pilots who can't navigate a finish
line.
Remember the start gate? Thermalling wasn't allowed. Why? Doesn't the
finish cylinder raise exactly the same concerns? So why wasn't this
addressed? Why aren't YOU asking these questions? After all, your
bent
is toward making the sport safer, right?

Safety is my primary concern. Which is to say, if I believed the
cylinder was inherently safer, I'd be writing in equal volume in
favor.
But it's clearly not the cure-all some propose. At best, not yet.

OC

Traffic is all arriving in a shallow arc at about the
same altitude
with as much as a 100 knot delta in speeds. Even more
if gliders stop
to thermal near the cylinder. This simply does not
happen at the finish
line.

Oh yeah? I was driving hard for the finish line at
Ephrata, 1/2 mile out, 500 feet and 145 knots when
I almost nailed a PW-5 at 500 feet doing an estimated
60 knots. All happened so fast I had no time to react.
Luckily I went just over him. Another gooood reason
to employ the finish cylinder, especially with sports
class machines in the contest.
JJ

At 21:00 06 May 2005, John Sinclair wrote:

Oh yeah? I was driving hard for the finish line at
Ephrata, 1/2 mile out, 500 feet and 145 knots when
I almost nailed a PW-5 at 500 feet doing an estimated
60 knots. All happened so fast I had no time to react.
Luckily I went just over him. Another gooood reason
to employ the finish cylinder, especially with sports
class machines in the contest.

Wow! Got your final glide calculations that badly
wrong?