RIP Tomas Reich - SGP Chile

"Would a "hard deck" prevent us from making certain mistakes?"

No, and that's not the point. The hard deck removes the points incentive for making those mistakes. There is a big difference between a rule against doing something, a ban, an attempt to stop something, and removing a positive incentive to do something. Now, we have a positive incentive for very low-altitude saves. Removing that incentive will not "prevent" anyone from doing anything. But it will lower the temptation. There is a difference between a law against something and removing a government subsidy for it. (Economist talking)

We do this throughout soaring. We do not allow pilots to land two miles from the airport, race back, reassemble and fly again. When we did, there were some poorly assembled gliders. We ban gyros, not trusting pilot judgement. We put points penalties in place for flying in restricted airspace. We force pilots to carry parachutes, and insurance.

We do it throughout sports. The olympics tries to ban doping. Bicycle racing forces people to wear helmets. Hockey forces players to wear mouthguards. Interestingly in every case the competitors fought it tooth and nail, just as now. In each case, it is interesting that competitors didn't want to lose the advantage that taking risks gave them. But they ignored that a rule that applies to everybody applies to everybody.

All ye who proclaim that "I'm a sensible pilot, I would never do anything that dumb," should be clamoring for the hard deck to prevent those crazies from stealing a contest from you by thermaling low. They're out there, and they will.

The hard deck is good enough for navy top gun school. I guess they're not manly enough for you?

On mountain flying. A hard deck is easy to implement, I think we agree, at the flatland sites where we do 90% of contest flying. Just what logic says "it's hard to do for mountain flying so we shouldn't do it at all?"

John Cochrane

And plus ça change reminds us that another 50 years of repeating the same old homilies is likely to make no more difference to the accident rate or the consequent popularity of contest soaring than the last 50 years have done.

John Cochrane

On Wednesday, January 24, 2018 at 8:25:48 PM UTC-5, jfitch wrote:

The pilots who object to the risk of competition, cite two things: mid air collisions, and having to get too low over unlandable terrain. No one I know cites having to fly too close to a ridge as a risk they are unwilling to take - that is part of soaring.

Neither midairs nor getting low over unlandable terrain are desirable for competition purposes, your friends are terribly misinformed.

Less tongue in cheek: The guys that go fast are doing so without taking any significant risk w.r.t. difficult outlandings. Risk is the temptress of the also ran. It should be resisted.

I speak as a pilot whom even my detractors would admit exhibits a larger than usual range of performance. When I'm "on", I have no need to take any risk to speak of. I simply fly my ass off, stay as high as I need to, it goes well. The difference between me and someone who is actually good at racing is consistency. The best guys are consistently "on".

best,
Evan Ludeman / T8

On Thursday, 25 January 2018 02:14:48 UTC+2, wrote:

Let's be honest. If soaring were a zero-risk activity, like video games, it wouldn't have the same appeal.
Chip Bearden

I cannot agree with this. I have skipped a lot of competitions because increased risk level, and making that risk smaller would increase appeal of these events greatly, at least for me. Competition flight is always a great adventure, feeling that this might not end well does nothing to me expect decision that I do not let this same situation to happen ever again.

All ye who proclaim that "I'm a sensible pilot, I would never do anything that dumb," should be clamoring for the hard deck to prevent those crazies from stealing a contest from you by thermaling low. They're out there, and they will.

The hard deck is good enough for navy top gun school. I guess they're not manly enough for you?


Readed my mind!


1 - Hard deck

On my first competitions we didn´t used yet minimum finish height here in Brazil, and I was feeling upset about the incentive to do stupid things on final glide... Regardles how fast I was on track there were allways the possibility of someone stealing your place only by irresponsible use of good luck.

Adding a hard deck on the whole contest area in my opinion would enhace security, it would force everyone to stop "pressing on" earlier in course (affecting decision making miles back the track), thus helping to avoid "no good landing options situations"

This deck heigh would depend on the terrain and weather we are flying in... it should not be too low in order to loose security sense, but not high enough in order to geopardyze the use of a otherwise "safely soarable day".

On F1 race, there are penalties for those who "put at least one wheel outside the track and get advantage with it". Our sport can adopt similar rules. As someone already said here, there are plenty of space between the racetrack and the guardrail/cushon/fence, why should we do not use the same "safety cushion"?

The hard deck may mean not landing out on track, some penalty points per occurence are enough incentive to avoid streching the risk.

I do not know about mountain flying, do not have experience on them.

2 - Flarm

Last pan american in 2017 in Argentina was an eye opening for me about the use of flarm (1st time using it). My past concern was that it would "beep" all the time without reason on a gaggle, but it did not happened... it only beeped when there was an actual incursion risk. In my humble opinion Flarm should be mandatory in all competitions, regardless of the number of gliders.

3 - Proximity penalty

But flarm alone is not the solution, a blue bird told me that IGC is already working on a score penalty proposal to discourage that fellow mate that "seems to be the owner" of the thermal. To me it would be a major improvement in safety.


Just my 3 cents.

Lautert - LA

Let's be honest. If soaring were a zero-risk activity, like video games,
it wouldn't have the same appeal.

I cannot agree with this. I have skipped a lot of competitions because
increased risk level, and making that risk smaller would increase appeal of
these events greatly, at least for me. Competition flight is always a great
adventure, feeling that this might not end well does nothing to me expect
decision that I do not let this same situation to happen ever again.

Random post selection in action here - not intending to pick a bone with any
individual, but since the excerpted top post/point has been singled out by
several as a point of disagreement, here's a take from a slightly different
perspective.

I don't DISagree with the top post's assertion...which is far from saying that
I AGREE with an assertion that it's risk that attracted/attracts me to
soaring. However, few would argue that it's easier to summon forth personal
focus from inside a cockpit in the atmosphere than (say) from inside "the
average soaring simulator" (aka - w. wry humor - "video game proxy"). Point
being that - for me - there's no question that one of the (very, very, many)
personal satisfactions and enjoyments I derive from soaring is the
rarely-verbalized one of the *knowledge* that the activity requires unceasing
"acceptable mastery" of the risks involved in flight. That fact - while hardly
qualifying me as an adrenaline junkie - is personally undeniable, and in that
sense IS part of soaring's appeal for me. The activity unavoidably demands -
and provides positive feedback about - good judgment and one of its real-world
benefits. I find that appealing.

So while the risk didn't attract me, successfully managing it IS a continuing
attraction. Life...full of paradoxes...

Perhaps pedantically,
Bob W.

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Even over strictly flat flying areas, the hard deck idea has serious problems:

1. Someone here already pointed out that a pilot's motivation to not land out is partially about points, for sure, but also about the various practical hardships (plus embarrassment) that result from not making it home. The incremental difference in flying behavior would be small at best.

2. The fact that you have scored the poor SOB as landing out due to his "hard deck" altitude, does not place a safe landing beneath him. If the next turnpoint is straight ahead and the best farm field was back over there, one's problems and temptations are not magically resolved by a hard deck rule. The exercise of marginally bad judgement about where to turn back for a safe landing under hard deck rules has a very good chance of having a quite similar consequence as exercising marginally bad judgement under present rules and circumstances. To a significant degree, the problem is moved, but not eliminated.

3. There is no way for a pilot in his cockpit to know whether he has become subject to the rule or not. GPS makes only a crude estimation of altitude. Pressure based altitude works at the home airport where reference pressure is known indirectly by field elevation referencing before takeoff and after landing. The pilot is able to set his altimeter at the home airport. At a remote location late in the day, the pilot will not have a pressure reference available to him and consequently will not know his altitude accurately enough for the proposed purposes. His altimeters are not accurate and furthermore he has no ability to guess how well the scorer's interpolation of local pressure will play out over time and map position. The result will be, that for competitive reasons, he will need to assume that he is not landed out -- likely all the way until exactly the same height at which he would have otherwise committed to a landing. The idea doesn't work.

The idea does work. If you don't want it, that's another issue.

1. Someone here already pointed out that a pilot's motivation to not land out is partially about points, for sure, but also about the various practical hardships (plus embarrassment) that result from not making it home. The incremental difference in flying behavior would be small at best.

JC: We'll see about that. However, the point is not to stop, regulate or force pilots to do anything, to supplant pilot judgement, and so on. All we do is remove a temptation. If you choose to thermal below 500 feet, that's up to you, but you will not get any contest points for doing it. We eliminate those campfire stories about thermaling over a teacup and winning the day..

In practice, I notice most pilots on recreational cross countries are pretty good at giving up around 500 feet. The traces from contest crashes are full of much lower thermaling -- down to 150 feet in one case.

In any case, the point is not to force pilots to change behavior. The point is merely to stop rewarding such behavior with contest points. And, to remove the occasional very low save from the set of tricks that help you to do well at contests.


2. The fact that you have scored the poor SOB as landing out due to his "hard deck" altitude, does not place a safe landing beneath him. If the next turnpoint is straight ahead and the best farm field was back over there, one's problems and temptations are not magically resolved by a hard deck rule. The exercise of marginally bad judgement about where to turn back for a safe landing under hard deck rules has a very good chance of having a quite similar consequence as exercising marginally bad judgement under present rules and circumstances. To a significant degree, the problem is moved, but not eliminated.

JC: Again, again, again, the point is not to regulate pilot judgement. Yeah, dude, you have to look out the window and not count on rules to tell you what to do. All it does is to remove a temptation that when things have gone to pot and you're under 500 feet, make your best pilot decision and we won't tempt you with points.


3. There is no way for a pilot in his cockpit to know whether he has become subject to the rule or not. GPS makes only a crude estimation of altitude. Pressure based altitude works at the home airport where reference pressure is known indirectly by field elevation referencing before takeoff and after landing. The pilot is able to set his altimeter at the home airport. At a remote location late in the day, the pilot will not have a pressure reference available to him and consequently will not know his altitude accurately enough for the proposed purposes. His altimeters are not accurate and furthermore he has no ability to guess how well the scorer's interpolation of local pressure will play out over time and map position. The result will be, that for competitive reasons, he will need to assume that he is not landed out -- likely all the way until exactly the same height at which he would have otherwise committed to a landing. The idea doesn't work.

JC: Absolutely false. Gee, how do we handle the hard ceiling, and the start gate top? With an SUA file, pressure altitude, and a readout on your glide computer that tells you if you've busted the limit. Same here. The hard deck would be a set of stepping stone SUAs in 500 foot increments. You are over an SUA with, say 1000' MSL top. When the pressure altitude on your glide computer says 499, you're done. (US rules would likely put in a graduated penalty, but you get the idea)

Monitoring an altitude floor is no harder than monitoring an altitude top.

Again, let's get over "it can't work." It can, easily, especially at flatland sites. The real argument is "I wanna keep thermaling at 300 feet" and I don't mind if others beat me by doing so." That's one worth having.

John Cochrane

Lots of good comments on this thread. I'd like to address the concept of contest participation.

Folks have commented on here that many pilots are scared away from flying contests because of the risks involved. And many posts are concerned with trying to mitigate the risk factors as well as to dis incentivize risky behavior by applying penalties.

All well and good but there exists a large portion of flyers who enjoy xc but don't want to have a dang thing to do with contest flying directly because of all the rule bull**** and hasstle that exists nowadays. I am one, and I directly know of three other experienced contest flyers who still fly loads of xc and record chasing but have walked away from contest flying due to the restrictive and political nature of the sport as it exists today.

Keep pilling on more and more rules regulations requirments and mandatory equipment and watch the ranks of contest flyers shrink even more. I ditched my ventus years ago and bought a 1-26 to race with those guys. The competition is FIERCE, the rules are sensible, most everyone flies respectfully and circumspectly. The contest is a direct test of piloting skill not bank account. AND landing out is not a sign of failure nor do guys heap loads of derision on a landout guys head.

We have very very few incidents or accidents. We DO fly over rough terrain, we do take many chances ( necessary with 23/1 ld) but for the most part, the guys that are racing these ships know what the hell they are doing and they know every nuance of their ship. I can't say the same for many other classes who have become slavishly dependent upon l/d and electronics at the expense of good piloting judgement and skill.
Dan

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.