Thoughts on crash/article in Soaring?

Does anybody have anything to say about the accident described in
Soaring magazine concerning a pilot who could not land to a stop on a
6,000 foot paved runway or the parallel dirt runway to the South?

I know this sounds very judgemental and I don't ordinarily make
negative comments about an accident, but holy cow, if I couldn't make
a 6,000 ft runway with or without spoilers, I'll quit the sport. I
believe the private pilot PTS states the applicant has to land and roll
to a stop within 200 ft of a predesignated spot. Most students can do
that every time prior to solo. I fly at an operation with a 4,000 ft
runway where we only use 1/2 for landing and the other 1/2 for launch.
Even new solo students don't need the full 4,000 feet! I know the
pilot got the gear and spoiler handles mixed up, but good grief.

Also, what's with the dumbass "high parasitic drag approach"?
Spoilers and slipping works fine. If you can't hit a 6000 ft runway
from 350 ft on final with spoilers or a forward slip, choose another
sport. The high parasitic drag approach described in the article does
not sound like a stable approach to landing.


The article should be renamed "Is conservative safe? YES, but bozos
who blame their instruction/instructors for being clueless are not."
He mainly blamed his conservative instruction and instructors instead
of admitting he was not thinking properly that day. I can't believe
his instructors went along with that attitude. He must have a problem
with freezing up and tunnel vision if something goes slightly wrong and
he can't salvage the situation he got himself into.

Flame away if it makes you feel better, but nothing will change my
mind.

I could not agree with you more. The only change I would make in your
comments would be to put the words "STUPID, MORONIC," in front of your
statement "dumbass high parasitic drag approach".

Any one of us can make a mistake when flying and that is just the
nature of being human. It sometimes happens. But to rationalize the
event as this article has done is beyond belief. The only thing I can
think of that is worse is that the SSA published the article.

I have spent more than enough time over the last several weeks
explaining this article to my students. More than one has asked about
the "high parasitic drag approach" and mentioned that I never taught
that to them. My answer is the same each time. "No I have not taught
this to you and I never will. It is NOT the way to land a sailplane.
Period." (Unless, of course, you want to fly through a 6,000 ft
runway and crash on the far end of it. Or, on the other hand, maybe
this method of "approach" had nothing to do with the crash and should
not have even been mentioned in the article. Even if the latter is the
case this approach method, in my opinion, is not an acceptable method
for landing a sailplane and should not be used nor "taught".)

Frank Reid


MS wrote:
Does anybody have anything to say about the accident described in
Soaring magazine concerning a pilot who could not land to a stop on a
6,000 foot paved runway or the parallel dirt runway to the South?

I know this sounds very judgemental and I don't ordinarily make
negative comments about an accident, but holy cow, if I couldn't make
a 6,000 ft runway with or without spoilers, I'll quit the sport. I
believe the private pilot PTS states the applicant has to land and roll
to a stop within 200 ft of a predesignated spot. Most students can do
that every time prior to solo. I fly at an operation with a 4,000 ft
runway where we only use 1/2 for landing and the other 1/2 for launch.
Even new solo students don't need the full 4,000 feet! I know the
pilot got the gear and spoiler handles mixed up, but good grief.

Also, what's with the dumbass "high parasitic drag approach"?
Spoilers and slipping works fine. If you can't hit a 6000 ft runway
from 350 ft on final with spoilers or a forward slip, choose another
sport. The high parasitic drag approach described in the article does
not sound like a stable approach to landing.


The article should be renamed "Is conservative safe? YES, but bozos
who blame their instruction/instructors for being clueless are not."
He mainly blamed his conservative instruction and instructors instead
of admitting he was not thinking properly that day. I can't believe
his instructors went along with that attitude. He must have a problem
with freezing up and tunnel vision if something goes slightly wrong and
he can't salvage the situation he got himself into.

Flame away if it makes you feel better, but nothing will change my
mind.

I guess my question would be - why have an 8 foot berm at the end of a
runway? If it hadn't been there, would this accident have happened?

Has anyone not pulled back firmly on the spoiler handle on a Blanik and
wondered why the brakes didn't work? Easy to see in hind-sight, not so
easy when you're tugging on a handle. The wrong one. I saw it happen
at a commercial operation in a Discus, when the pilot wondered why the
brakes were weak; I pointed out the brake handle on the stick, and he
looked in disbelief; how could he not have seen it?

I commend the author - this is great education, people are talking
about something important.

DD

J.A.M. wrote:
Well if someone cannot stop in a 6000 ft runway then he/she shouldn't have
been soloed.
An instructor will not solo you if he sees you 'freezing and tunnel
visioning' at any time.
So at some point it may be an instructor problem...

"MS" escribió en el mensaje
oups.com...
Does anybody have anything to say about the accident described in
Soaring magazine concerning a pilot who could not land to a stop on a
6,000 foot paved runway or the parallel dirt runway to the South?

I know this sounds very judgemental and I don't ordinarily make
negative comments about an accident, but holy cow, if I couldn't make
a 6,000 ft runway with or without spoilers, I'll quit the sport. I
believe the private pilot PTS states the applicant has to land and roll
to a stop within 200 ft of a predesignated spot. Most students can do
that every time prior to solo. I fly at an operation with a 4,000 ft
runway where we only use 1/2 for landing and the other 1/2 for launch.
Even new solo students don't need the full 4,000 feet! I know the
pilot got the gear and spoiler handles mixed up, but good grief.

Also, what's with the dumbass "high parasitic drag approach"?
Spoilers and slipping works fine. If you can't hit a 6000 ft runway
from 350 ft on final with spoilers or a forward slip, choose another
sport. The high parasitic drag approach described in the article does
not sound like a stable approach to landing.


The article should be renamed "Is conservative safe? YES, but bozos
who blame their instruction/instructors for being clueless are not."
He mainly blamed his conservative instruction and instructors instead
of admitting he was not thinking properly that day. I can't believe
his instructors went along with that attitude. He must have a problem
with freezing up and tunnel vision if something goes slightly wrong and
he can't salvage the situation he got himself into.

Flame away if it makes you feel better, but nothing will change my
mind.

I wondered about the 'high parasitic approach' technique
as well...but I don't think discussing a particular
technique was the point of the article. Rather the
author was brave enough to endure the rantings of the
psychopaths who would run him out of the sport...because
they know better. He screwed up, he admits that and
writes quite forthrightly about that. How is this
any different then someone who cannot put their glider
together correctly? Do we run them off also?

Personally I thought it was some of the better writing
I have seen in the magazine, because it got me to think.

"Stewart Kissel" wrote in
message ...
I wondered about the 'high parasitic approach' technique
as well...but I don't think discussing a particular
technique was the point of the article. Rather the
author was brave enough to endure the rantings of the
psychopaths who would run him out of the sport...because
they know better. He screwed up, he admits that and
writes quite forthrightly about that. How is this
any different then someone who cannot put their glider
together correctly? Do we run them off also?

Personally I thought it was some of the better writing
I have seen in the magazine, because it got me to think.


All who read last month's article must also read this month's article, "Five
Hundred Twenty-Five Extremely Dangerous Flights."

Dan'l wrote:
I guess my question would be - why have an 8 foot berm at the end of a
runway? If it hadn't been there, would this accident have happened?

Not this one, maybe, but surely a slightly different accident would have
sprouted from the same roots. An 8-foot, or 80-foot berm shouldn't have
much to do with crashing on a 6000' runway. Operating procedures and
training, perhaps.

Maybe the real fault is that the runway is twice as long as it ought to
be. Yeah, that's the ticket.


Jack

I have often wondered about what the author calls "high parasitic drag
approach".

Of course, it should never happen... but IF one found oneself very
high on final I have always thought the best strategy would be to pull
full airbrake, slip as much as possible and then dive as fast as
placarded limits allow. Drag increases with the square of speed, so
this should get you down with the steepest descent. In this scenario
you should bleed off speed to normal approach speed before getting into
ground effect.

I have discussed this with my instructor, and he thinks the steepest
way to get down is to use the normal approach speed. He knows more
that I do so I believe him... but I still wonder!!! (Especially as
the normal approach is close to the best L/D - albeit without
airbrakes).

The other approach would be to fly just above stall speed and "mush"
down. Perhaps this would be steeper still, but would be incredibly
dangerous.

My experience and thinking process are probably derived from
hang-gliding where there are no spoilers or flaps and you can't
consistantly slip. Increasing the speed on final is the recommended
way of steepening the approach, in fact it is the ONLY way. I'm not
sure why this experience would not translate to sailplanes.

BTW, personally I thought it was rather brave of the accident victim to
publish the article in soaring in the hope that others could learn from
his mistake, and at high risk of ridicule (which he has experienced).


MS wrote:
Does anybody have anything to say about the accident described in
Soaring magazine concerning a pilot who could not land to a stop on a
6,000 foot paved runway or the parallel dirt runway to the South?

I know this sounds very judgemental and I don't ordinarily make
negative comments about an accident, but holy cow, if I couldn't make
a 6,000 ft runway with or without spoilers, I'll quit the sport. I
believe the private pilot PTS states the applicant has to land and roll
to a stop within 200 ft of a predesignated spot. Most students can do
that every time prior to solo. I fly at an operation with a 4,000 ft
runway where we only use 1/2 for landing and the other 1/2 for launch.
Even new solo students don't need the full 4,000 feet! I know the
pilot got the gear and spoiler handles mixed up, but good grief.

Also, what's with the dumbass "high parasitic drag approach"?
Spoilers and slipping works fine. If you can't hit a 6000 ft runway
from 350 ft on final with spoilers or a forward slip, choose another
sport. The high parasitic drag approach described in the article does
not sound like a stable approach to landing.


The article should be renamed "Is conservative safe? YES, but bozos
who blame their instruction/instructors for being clueless are not."
He mainly blamed his conservative instruction and instructors instead
of admitting he was not thinking properly that day. I can't believe
his instructors went along with that attitude. He must have a problem
with freezing up and tunnel vision if something goes slightly wrong and
he can't salvage the situation he got himself into.

Flame away if it makes you feel better, but nothing will change my
mind.

"This could possibly be a "SIGN" of divine guidance that the pilot in
question should find a new sport, like golf."

Or become an SSA Regional Director...which he is.

Seriously, once you test your spoilers, keep your hand on the spoiler
handle. Also, once your gear is down, leave it down until you are darn sure
you've thermalled out. If you don't thermal out, then your mind needs to
change track back to the landing. When you do that, the first thing you do
is the checklist. Then you land...unless you hit a whopper thermal.

I don't have anything to add about the accident in question, which was
clearly a colossal lapse in airmanship, of mammoth proportions. But I
do think Skydell's approach to the article was admirable. He
recognized that there was a huge bug in the piloting software in his
head, marvelled that such a bug could go undetected for so long, and
questioned whether the bug was fixable. We all have some bugs in our
internal software, propably not as big as his, but we should take a
similar approach to debugging ourselves when we make mistakes.

I've read many articles in Soaring over the years by idiots who flew
perfectly good gliders into trees with the spoilers open or some other
such thing, who write up accounts of their great adventure, subtley
pointing to extenuating circumstances which caused their normally
superior piloting skill to fail them, and proudly describing some
decision they made which saved them from an even greater disaster.
While nominally admitting error, these accounts usually have an element
of "these exact set of circumstances that lead to my accident were
somehow unique in a way I couldn't have been prepared for, and so I
must share them with the world" hidden underneath. I did not detect
this undercurrent of excuse making in Skydell's article.



MS wrote:
Does anybody have anything to say about the accident described in
Soaring magazine concerning a pilot who could not land to a stop on a
6,000 foot paved runway or the parallel dirt runway to the South?

I know this sounds very judgemental and I don't ordinarily make
negative comments about an accident, but holy cow, if I couldn't make
a 6,000 ft runway with or without spoilers, I'll quit the sport. I
believe the private pilot PTS states the applicant has to land and roll
to a stop within 200 ft of a predesignated spot. Most students can do
that every time prior to solo. I fly at an operation with a 4,000 ft
runway where we only use 1/2 for landing and the other 1/2 for launch.
Even new solo students don't need the full 4,000 feet! I know the
pilot got the gear and spoiler handles mixed up, but good grief.

Also, what's with the dumbass "high parasitic drag approach"?
Spoilers and slipping works fine. If you can't hit a 6000 ft runway
from 350 ft on final with spoilers or a forward slip, choose another
sport. The high parasitic drag approach described in the article does
not sound like a stable approach to landing.


The article should be renamed "Is conservative safe? YES, but bozos
who blame their instruction/instructors for being clueless are not."
He mainly blamed his conservative instruction and instructors instead
of admitting he was not thinking properly that day. I can't believe
his instructors went along with that attitude. He must have a problem
with freezing up and tunnel vision if something goes slightly wrong and
he can't salvage the situation he got himself into.

Flame away if it makes you feel better, but nothing will change my
mind.

I'm still having trouble thinking this is a good article. How does the
title "Is Conservative Safe" have anything to do with the main cause of
the crash. That is, a distraction that caused the lose of situational
awareness resulting in the pilot raising the gear instead of opening
the spoilers. It makes no sense to me. Please help me understand.

Other questions that need answers a

1. The sailplane is going 75 knots 10 to15 feet off the ground with
the spoilers open. The spoilers are then closed and the sailplane
travels maybe 4500 feet losing 10 knots of airspeed (65 knots on
impact) and the pilot is slipping the sailplane for some of that time.
How is that possible? That equates to an L/D of 300/1 to 450/1. I
understand the concept of ground effect but I'm not sure that ground
effect can have that much impact. Nor do I believe that reducing ones
airspeed from 75 to 65 can increase ones L/D tenfold. Some of the
story is not making sense to me.

2. If ground effect has much influence at all then the concept of
using the "High Parasite Drag Approach to Landings" when one is high on
final is a complete and total joke as according to the article the high
speed is kept until the normal round out. That is, the excess speed
(energy) is to be dissipated at the worst possible time - in ground
effect.

3. The author states that he is "glad to have it (the high parasite
drag approach) in my repertoire of flight skills." This implies that
he still believes this technique used when one is high on final is
better or at least as good as the full spoiler, full slip, proper or
normal patttern speed adjusted for wind method taught by most
instructors. Is there anyone out there who thinks diving at the ground
at 85 to 90 knots and holding that speed until round out will result in
a shorter landing as opposed to using full spoilers, normal airspeed
and a full slip? If so please explain it to all of us.

Finally there is just too much rationalization for me. The story is
simple and there but for the grace of God go any one of us, certainly
me included. Mr Skydell just got caught and we did not. However it is
over written and clouds the facts. The story should be:

Title: The Other Day I flew like a Moron.

While attempting to land my sailplane the other day I got distracted
and totally lost my attention to what I was doing. I raised my gear
instead of opening my spoilers and flew through the runway and crashed
into a berm off the end of the runway.

Boy, wasn't that stupid of me.

Thank You

Option 2:

Title: The Berm That Ate My Plane. (Prompted by one of the responses)


While attempting to land my sailplane the other day I got distracted
and had a poor landing. I did make a couple of minor mistakes. Mainly
I raised my gear instead of opening my spoilers and could not land on
the intended 6000 ft paved runway. I flew off the end and hit a berm.
What idiot would build a berm off the end of the runway. If the berm
had not been there I would not have crashed as I am sure I could have
landed within the next 2 or 3 thousand feet.

I have retained an attorney and am taking legal action against the
bozos who built the berm.

Thank You

PS Note that many words can be substituted for berm such as fence,
tree, road, house etc. In today's "It can not be my fault society" the
berm builder would probably be at fault.

I close repeating this thought. The accident could have happened to
any one of us. Each of us is human and each of us has made many
mistakes in this life. I do not fault Mr. Skydell for his mistake nor
do I think less of him. I know Mr Skydell and find him to be extremely
intelligent. He just had a bad day flying. However, I do not like the
article as I find it an over rationalization of his mistake and I find
his recollection of what happened confusing at best.