RIP Tomas Reich - SGP Chile

On Thursday, 25 January 2018 23:11:13 UTC+2, Steve Koerner wrote:
John: I agree that it would be possible to set a numeric criteria and use your flight recorder like we do for other SUA numbers. I do need to state the issue in different terms...

The class A SUA is effectively set in terms of pressure measurement at nominal 17,500. It doesn't matter that one's flight recorder is reading wrong by +/- 500ft. For SUA, we simply all agree and understand that we are going by a known faulty pressure measurement. In fact, the expectation that it will read wrong by 500 ft at some probability is the reason that it's not an 18,000 ft contest criteria. When we are at the start cylinder, our altimeters have been recently referenced to field elevation; so in that case the measurement is fairly accurate. Not so out on course, 100 miles away late in the day. There will not be a suitable relationship between what is measured and where the ground actually is.

You would have to incorporate an expectable measuring uncertainty into your hard deck. The hard deck would have to be set to avoid the obvious problem that would be created by a false confidence scenario wherein the rules indicate that I'm not outside safety limits so I must be safe enough to keep circling.

You will end up with a hard deck number not very acceptable to very many people. Pilots will prefer to eyeball what is a safe circling height rather than have a faulty measurement dictate when it is not safe according to the rules. To state the problem differently: being scored as landing out due to an unreasonably high "hard deck" when you in fact, make it around without compromising your safety, will seem objectionable to most. I know it would be objectionable to me.

What's more, pilots will ultimately change their circling behavior only minisculely due to a hard deck land out rule -- they still need to get back to the airfield for plenty of good reasons.

Hard deck is not "lowest safe altitude". It is altitude where scoring stops..

You want to "dis incentivize" risky behavior and minimize "risk" in a contest, here's your new rules:

-No saves below 1500 ft AGL hard deck, your scoring stops
-fly closer than 1000 fr to any mountain surface your scoring stops
-no more than 3 planes in a gaggle, you find your own or wait till someone departs
- all thermals must be flown using left turns no matter where on task cause some idiot might enter your thermal the other way
-no flying closer than 400 ft to nearest ship
- no peeing unless you have a cathiter cause thats a distraction
-fly slower than 3knots of your ships published stall speed and your scoring stops
-on a strong convection day (500fpm+) no flight speed greater than your ships max manuver speed.

Add these to all the existing rules, and there you have it, minimum risk max dis incentives.

IF some goof wants to enact all those rules at a contest, we will STILL be having this conversation a year from now when some goof has an accident and we all moan n groan wringing our hands about how risky contest flying has become and what NEW rules we can enplace to help keep someone alive. Now see who wants to come out and fly that contest.

On Thursday, January 25, 2018 at 1:11:13 PM UTC-8, Steve Koerner wrote:
John: I agree that it would be possible to set a numeric criteria and use your flight recorder like we do for other SUA numbers. I do need to state the issue in different terms...

The class A SUA is effectively set in terms of pressure measurement at nominal 17,500. It doesn't matter that one's flight recorder is reading wrong by +/- 500ft. For SUA, we simply all agree and understand that we are going by a known faulty pressure measurement. In fact, the expectation that it will read wrong by 500 ft at some probability is the reason that it's not an 18,000 ft contest criteria. When we are at the start cylinder, our altimeters have been recently referenced to field elevation; so in that case the measurement is fairly accurate. Not so out on course, 100 miles away late in the day. There will not be a suitable relationship between what is measured and where the ground actually is.

You would have to incorporate an expectable measuring uncertainty into your hard deck. The hard deck would have to be set to avoid the obvious problem that would be created by a false confidence scenario wherein the rules indicate that I'm not outside safety limits so I must be safe enough to keep circling.

You will end up with a hard deck number not very acceptable to very many people. Pilots will prefer to eyeball what is a safe circling height rather than have a faulty measurement dictate when it is not safe according to the rules. To state the problem differently: being scored as landing out due to an unreasonably high "hard deck" when you in fact, make it around without compromising your safety, will seem objectionable to most. I know it would be objectionable to me.

What's more, pilots will ultimately change their circling behavior only minisculely due to a hard deck land out rule -- they still need to get back to the airfield for plenty of good reasons.

There are two reasons for the hard deck: one is to keep idiots from being idiots. But the more important one is to keep the sensible pilots from having to be idiots to compete. I guy who frequently circles very low might continue to do so with a hard deck rule. But the more sensible pilot who stays above the hard deck and goes slower as a result would not lose to the idiot.. This isn't really about protecting the idiot, it's about protecting the responsible pilot who must otherwise become an idiot, or lose.

Modern flight computers will easily be able to warn you when you are getting close to the deck, exactly as they do now for the ceiling.

John has it exactly right that the argument is really "I want to keep circling at 300 ft". All we are doing is creating a virtual ground slightly above the real ground to insure everyone's margin for error is equal, so their chances of winning on this basis are equal. It does not change the competition at all other than this.

It as amusing that the same arguments are used by some of the same individuals against motorgliders: that the motor allows continuing low over unlandable terrain and this is unfair. All you need in a non-motorized glider to do that is a high risk tolerance, this is equally unfair. The hard deck makes both of those arguments moot.

As always, John makes some excellent points. As occasionally happens, I don't necessarily agree with all of them.

Bob restated my thesis much more accurately and succinctly. It's not the risk, per se, that is appealing. It's mastering and managing the risk that keep me coming back every year.

Using the rules to reduce risk isn't new. We've been doing it as long as I've been flying, including: (skip to the bottom if you don't want a walk down soaring memory lane)

1. Eliminated the risks of high-speed retrieves from an early outlanding and hurried assembly before a quick relaunch.
2. Eliminated the risk of high-speed starts.
3. Reduced the collision risk of mass starts and eliminated the scoring risk that one or more pilots might be missed in the confusion.
4. Reduced the risk of heading out on course relatively low because of the old 1,000 m start gate altitude limit.
5. Eliminated the risk of low final glides, at least to the finish.
6. Eliminated the risk of low high-speed finishes.
7. Reduced the risks of catastrophic points penalties from relatively minor rules infractions with graduated penalties.
8. Eliminated the risk of being late in the launch queue and sitting on the ground while early launches start on course (relevant for old-style distance tasks and storm days).
9. Eliminated the risk of landing out simply because tasks were called under the philosophy that only half the field should finish.
10. Eliminated the risk of landouts on straight out and early area distance tasks.
11. Reduced the risk of flying with too little sleep from long flights and equally long retrieves occasioned by more aggressive tasking, including distance tasks.
12. Reduced the risk that one or a few pilots could gain a huge advantage through luck on an uncertain day (i.e., before devaluation became widespread).
13. Eliminated the risk of committing to a task set before the pilots' meeting that might be clearly inappropriate just a few hours later, which could result in mass landouts or a gross undercall.
14. Eliminated the risk that the manually operated start/finish gate might make an error, favoring or disadvantaging a pilot unfairly.
15. Eliminated risk that a pilot might attempt to achieve an advantage by [illegally] overloading his/her glider on a strong day.
16. Eliminated the risk that a pilot might illegally benefit and/or create a collision hazard and/or invite regulatory action from an airspace violation.
17. Reduced the risk of large numbers of gliders being forced to relight nearly simultaneously after being launched before soaring is possible.
18. Eliminated the risk of having to select a takeoff time in mid morning without knowing when the weather would become soarable.
19. Reduced collision risk by encouraging--and in some cases mandating--the use of FLARM technology.
20. Reduced the risk of being unable to locate a downed pilot by encouraging--and in some cases mandating--the use of ELTs.
21. Reduced the risk of landout damage by offering point-of-furthest-progress scoring and an airport bonus to incentivize pilots to land at airports.

I'm sure there are more. The point is that it's not out of line to consider another rules change to try to reduce the risk of pilots making mistakes when they are low. But is that what we want?

When I said that soaring without any risks wouldn't be as appealing, I wasn't referring to the above (mostly; I don't want to set off another debate about final glides and finish lines!).

Nor was I referring to the risk of, say, a midair collision, an uncertain event with disastrous consequences over which we have imperfect control.

But soaring isn't a video game (Condor excepted). We preemptively manage risk every time we turn our backs on the home airport and head out cross country, accepting the higher risk of damage from a possible land out. Mastering and managing that risk by flying well enough to return home while knowing how to pick a field and land in it safely if we can't is both exciting and satisfying, at least to me.

It's the same for flying a contest task on weak days when we otherwise wouldn't even bother to launch, much less attempt a cross-country flight, and for learning how to fly safely and competitively on ridges and in the mountains.

We all fly for different reasons. But for me, soaring would not have the same appeal if all we did was call short tasks on only the best days over landable flatlands. No one is suggesting that (yet). But the trend I see is towards a more regulated contest environment where we attempt to manage risks more through rules making (OK, scoring incentives), leaving less up to the pilot. That's not always a bad thing, just as free marketplaces need certain laws and regulations to prevent shortsighted and/or unethical players from profiting unfairly at the expense of others.

But we took navigation skills off the table years ago when we allow the use of GPS, making it easier for certain pilots (you know who you are!) to place well. We're already hearing that soaring is headed toward universal auxiliary power and the end of landouts, another skill from the old days.

For the sake of discussion, what hard deck would be proposed for flatland flying? Is the fact that some pilots could safely take it down to 500' while others would be at their limit at 1,000' mean we should set the deck at the higher level? Would removing the incentives for things that expert pilots can do safely but less qualified pilots cannot do reduce the reward for such excellence and result in compressing the skills--and points--of the pilots in a contest?

And could there be unintended consequences? I know my attention is more focused on my glide computer and altimeter when I am approaching the finish cylinder to make sure I don't bust the hard deck there...and that's when all I have to do is push over more or less to make the numbers come out. I watched several of the world's best pilots bust the hard deck at the finish at the Chile SGP in their eagerness to win the race. Was that a conscious decision knowing what the penalties were, or did they just take their eyes off the ball momentarily?

As I'm struggling to stay above the floor in a marginal thermal, do I want to have to watch the ####ing altitude readout closely not just to insure I'm hanging on but that I'm not sinking through the floor? If the thermal is choppy and I'm marginal, will I be tempted to pull back slightly to maintain my altitude, thereby eroding my safety margin? Will I be forced to ignore a hawk going up fast a half mile away knowing I'm likely to drop through the hard desk on the way there?

Will we be discouraged from flying over low hills and ridge lines seeking thermals when low because although they are far more likely sources, the hard deck makes them unusable?

And since we're trying to address human frailties here, what about the subtle message that it's safe to circle just above the hard deck? I don't know about the rest of you but my decisions to keep thermaling at 500' are very, very few and far between. I don't have a single criterion for that decision; it's contextual and depends on altitude, turbulence, wind, landing options, terrain, time of day, my physical and mental condition, my standing at the time and what kind of contest it is, etc. Some pilots may subconsciously be LESS likely to worry about the risks of low thermaling so long as they remain above the hard deck...because it's within the rules. The human mind behaves in odd ways.

I agree with John that technically a hard deck could be implemented, albeit imperfectly, in the flatlands. I just don't agree (at least now) that we should do it.

But it's a thoughtful discussion. We should probably retitle this and move it to another thread, however.

Chip Bearden

"Hard deck" rules would effectively eliminate participation anywhere but Kansas (which is actually FLATTER than a pancake. There are more surface anomalies on your average flapjack than the terrain on the Kansas prairie.) In mountainous or ridge terrain, you can go from 100 ft. AGL to 3,000 ft. AGL in less than a half-mile. Does your scoring program recognize these factors? How good is your 3D terrain map? Whose terrain map elevation data do you use? When was the data last updated? Are you using pressure altitude or GPS altitude to determine aircraft altitude? And since when is it considered "unsafe" to run a ridge within a few wingspans of the terrain, with plenty of vertical clearance just to your left (or right)? The proposal to "stop scoring" when you are within 1,000 ft. (vertically or horizontally) from the terrain is laughable. You cannot ridge soar unless you are "on the deck" and close in. It's kind of like when they asked bank robber Willie Sutton why he robbed banks. "Because that's where the money is." In the mountains or ridges, that's where the lift is.

You want no-risk competition? There is always Condor and the regularly scheduled internet contests. Somehow, I don't see it making the Olympics, but then again, neither will real life soaring.

Do I have to re-explain things in the same thread over and over? The hard deck does not use a terrain model. It is a set of SUA files, that specify MSL pressure altitude minimums, in stairstep fashion at 500 foot intervals. So in some places you're 1000' over the actual ground. Higher elevations over unladable terrain are a good idea. It is monitored exactly the same way we monitor 17500', start gate max, finish gate min, etc. Set altitude to field at takeoff, on your flight computer. When your flight computer pressure altitude says (say) 999' in a 1000' MSL pressure altitude, you're busted, just like 17501. In mountain sites, ridges stick out -- it's 500' over the valley floor. But duh, we'd try it in the flatlands first.

Sorry to be getting testy, but these points were made and answered about three times higher up in the thread. And we're not idiots, you know. If it were so obvious we might have figured that out on our own before going public..

John Cochrane

Chip has made very good points. Most compelling is the simple point that a hard deck is a distraction. It's a contest scoring related distraction at a point in time and space that none of us can afford one. I know how much focus is required when approaching the class A airspace boundary. When a possible off-field landing is imminent, I don't have spare bandwidth to deal with an artificially created problem and its set of nuances.

I also strongly agree with Chip's point that human nature will allow that circling to the bottom of what is permitted must be OK for me since it would be OK for others. That factor, combined with the problem of altitude measurement uncertainty forces the hard deck to a large number that simply will not be acceptable.

I generally favor rules to encourage safety. I have long favored changing to mandatory Flarm. I see the hard deck idea, unfortunately, as not workable.

On Thursday, January 25, 2018 at 7:41:40 PM UTC-8, Steve Koerner wrote:
Chip has made very good points. Most compelling is the simple point that a hard deck is a distraction. It's a contest scoring related distraction at a point in time and space that none of us can afford one. I know how much focus is required when approaching the class A airspace boundary. When a possible off-field landing is imminent, I don't have spare bandwidth to deal with an artificially created problem and its set of nuances.

I also strongly agree with Chip's point that human nature will allow that circling to the bottom of what is permitted must be OK for me since it would be OK for others. That factor, combined with the problem of altitude measurement uncertainty forces the hard deck to a large number that simply will not be acceptable.

I generally favor rules to encourage safety. I have long favored changing to mandatory Flarm. I see the hard deck idea, unfortunately, as not workable.

Why is the hard deck any different than the hard ground? Do you find the hard ground to be a distraction? You already successfully race over a hard deck - the ground. Why is this one any different?

In fact it is far less of a distraction, because violation of the rules results in a penalty, and violation of the ground results in death.

Lots of comparisons to F-1 with respect to hard decks. What we have yet to acknowledge is the cars are safer. The wide skirts on tracks don't prevent the cars from hitting walls. Watch Robert Kubitsa's crash in Montreal. The safety barriers were not in play he was injured pretty bad but he lived to drive again. We have made great improvements in sailplane performance but not crash surviveability. People still crash modern passenger cars and die but at a lower rate then trundling a vintage 50's cat into the same object as a modern entry level Toyota. Rules have made sailplane racing safer but people still die and are going to die as long as we fly. We cannot legislate common sense. Even with rules people still crash cars. A glider is dangerous as soon as it is pulled to the flight line just as a car is dangerous as soon as we start the engine. Cars are crashed with significantly more energy then gliders but the crashes are more survivable. Rather than worrying about new L/D, better self launch, electronic devices and rules, pilots should demand manufacturers figure out how to build ships to survive a crash with greater regularity.

Jon, That reasoning would work if the hard deck were somehow offered in lieu of the hard ground. Unfortunately we would have to deal with both at the same time. Would we not?


Why is the hard deck any different than the hard ground? Do you find the hard ground to be a distraction? You already successfully race over a hard deck - the ground. Why is this one any different?

In fact it is far less of a distraction, because violation of the rules results in a penalty, and violation of the ground results in death.