Alan Wilson wrote:
PS. Intentional rope breaks are in the same category. In 35 years of aero
tow at both ends of the rope, I have NEVER had a rope break, so why do some
purposefully and dangerously create such a rare natural event.
I saw two of them in two successive weekends in 2003 (one at ASC, then
one at WGC the following week). I'm sure the pilots of the gliders
concerned were pleased that they had received appropriate training in
the 60 seconds subsequent to the rope breaks.
Your assertion that simulating a rope break is dangerous is questionable
too: Do you expect that instructors are likely to pull the yellow knob
when the glider is in a place they can't get out of? If they have lots
of options, it isn't dangerous!
(perhaps you're confusing the terms "elevated risk" and "dangerous".
I don't think the word "dangerous" means what you think it means)
Back to spinning: We must, of necessity, place faith in the designers
and what they write in the flight manual. Yes, I understand that the
flight manual refers to a brand new glider with clean wings, everything
lining up and fitting just right, no control slop, perfect conditions...
... but then again, the flight manual expects that when it's talking
about -every- maneuver. We accept that in real life things won't be
that perfect, and we also expect that if the airframe has degraded
far enough away from perfection to be unsafe that we'll ground the
aircraft.
If the flight manual, and JAR22, say that a spin can be performed
safely, and we take appropriate precautions, and we make allowances
for less than perfect conditions, then there is no reason why a spin
cannot be performed safely. Your assertion that we need to "Stop
unnecessary spinning before more die," is simply not supportable by
real life evidence.
I agree that 20 turns without appropriate preparation and training is
insane: You're a test pilot at that stage. JAR22 certainly doesn't
require any testing to that extent, and who knows what rhythms the
aircraft will get itself into during a sustained spin.
But being afraid of spinning in the first place, and teaching that fear
to other people, is undoing the work of people like Mike Valentine who
implemented the spin training which is largely responsible for you
being able to say, "Aviation has moved on, lets go with it." *ANY*
glider can spin. Without training on recovery methods, spins are
routinely fatal.
And here's the take-home message: Without training, EVERYTHING we
do in aircraft is routinely fatal. Turns, launches, landings,
straight-and-level flight, thermalling, aerobatics -- EVERYTHING
happens at an increased level of risk, and training is one of the
ways we manage that risk.
You may declare that spinning is a risky venture so you won't do it;
But that's conceptually the same as saying that turning in circles
is risky so you won't do that either. All it really means is that
(a) you've set your personal risk threshold at a certain level, and
(b) even after carrying out various risk management actions, you
perceive that the risk of spinning is higher than that threshold.
A trainee on her second flight will carry out exactly the same
analysis and determine that the launching maneuver is higher than her
personal risk threshold, and hence expect the instructor to do it.
With training, she'll eventually see that the risk of launching is
lower than she thought it was, and adjust her perception accordingly.
The PURPOSE of training is to turn unreasonable risks into manageable
risks through familiarity and understanding.
In Australia, at least one spin will be carried out each year for
every flying GFA member (during the annual check). More spins will
be carried out in basic pre-solo training. We're probably talking
about something in the order of several thousand deliberate spins per
annum, perhaps closer to 10,000 if we accept that most people do
more than one of them per year and trainees do heaps of them before
solo. Almost all of those spins are carried out sans-parachute.
Particularly at winch clubs, most of them happen from less than
2000' AGL.
... and how many accidents do we have each year during deliberate
spins? 0.1 ? 0.05 ? Pretty close to zero, really, isn't it?
Now look back through history: What has happened to the -accidental-
spin rate during base-leg or final turns in the years since mandatory
spin training was introduced? How long has it been since someone
in .au killed themselves by spinning in from 400' during landing?
I don't accept that spinning is a risky maneuver if close to ten
thousand of them can be initiated in Australia every year, with an
accident rate approaching zero.
I also don't accept that any reduction in spin fatalities during
circuits is due to the design of modern gliders which don't want to
spin, because by and large Australians are still flying the same
gliders they were flying 20 years ago, and they demonstrably DO want
to spin.
Finally, your contention that risky maneuvers shouldn't be attempted
in training (rope breaks, spins, what else?!) is completely
unsupportable. We'll never know how many lives have been saved by
the automatic responses we try to instill during spin-training.
We'll never know how many pilots would have killed themselves if
their pre-solo training didn't give them the experience of a low-level
rope break. You assert that these things don't need to be in training
because "in real life" they don't happen very often, but you have
no way of knowing whether the REASON they don't happen very often
is because they're covered so comprehensively in training!
In closing: I find that the attention this subject attracts, and the
strong emotional responses it provokes, completely unfathomable. The
reactions here are vastly out of proportion to the ACTUAL risk. Most
of them also completely neglect to consider basic risk management, and
the purpose of training. Sure, if you do spins without thinking
about it you'll hurt yourself -- but we don't do that in real life,
do we? Or if we do, its effects aren't significant, because people
don't tend to kill themselves during spin training.
I think much of the reaction stems from the possibility that the
protagonists *don't like* spinning, and they rationalize their
dislike by saying it's "dangerous". That's understandable, but
unfortunately not something that has been shown to be accurate.
- mark
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I tried an internal modem, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
but it hurt when I walked. Mark Newton
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