Hi, It was a second mid-air collision at this competition within 24 hours. The day before of the tragic even, two pilots managed to get out their gliders safely with one wreckage ending up in a lake and another one in the forest.
The second accident, I believe it was pre-start (btw a lot of Polish airfields are located very close to relatively large cities, so pre-satrt flying above built up areas is unavoidable), resulted in death of one of the pilots involved and a serious injury to a person on the ground. Some reports indicate that the parachute of the deceased pilot did not open, questions being asked about parachutes repacking, and pilots training in getting out of the glider and using a parachute etc... The pilots meeting and the organisers decided to cancel the competition and to donate whatever left of the competition entry fees to the person injured by the glider derbies. The accidents triggered a discussion in the Polish Gliding newsgroup (http://forum.szybowce.com/szybowce/zawody-w-pile/15/). The discussion covers such issues as mandatory usage of FLARM, quality look-out training, acceptance for dangerous flying by some pilots, competition organisation that minimises the risks, concept of a safety committee at the competition, pilots fatigue, participating pilots recency, usage of oxygen etc. I have to say that observing the Polish gliding scene from afar, a lot of issues that the Poles still seem to struggle with have been resolved and implemented in Australia which I believe made our completions somewhat safer. Regards Jarek ----- Original Message ----- From: "Discussion of issues relating to Soaring in Australia." To: Cc: Sent:Wed, 04 Jun 2014 10:11:21 +1000 Subject:Re: [Aus-soaring] Liability to public. Dear All, I am reasonably certain that most of our airborne contact incidents occurred in thermalling situations. The assumption that we should avoid any activities (aerotowing, turpoints, traversing or thermalling) over built up areas, is a nonsense. Perhaps ther is a case for improving vigilance in these areas of concentrated activity, but total aviodance is not going to solve that. Lets get the thread back on track and concentrate on realistic safety improvements please. Regards Glenn On 4/06/2014 9:50 AM, Nick Gilbert wrote: At the first Leeton JoeyGlide we invented several turnpoints in areas where there wasn't one handy - mainly for those 'funnel' type points that you use for non-fixed tasks (ie. AAT) to get everyone coming from the same direction. From memory I think they were named after supporters of the contest - Mander, Shirley, Mason, etc. Cheers, Nick. On Wed, Jun 4, 2014 at 9:17 AM, Tim Shirley wrote: "send not to know for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee." That was written 500 years ago. He wasn't wrong. We have retained the tradition of having waypoints at geographic features for three reasons. One is sheer laziness - we already had locations of towns and silos. A second is psychological - we like to say in the bar that we went to Hillston, rather than "i went to a waypoint in the scrub west of Hillston". The third is more practical and does have a safety implication - if you are heading for a town you can see it out of the window, and don't have to keep referring to an instrument on the panel. None of these are showstoppers if change is seen as necessary. Cheers _Tim Shirley_ _tra dire é fare c' é mezzo il mare_ On 04/06/2014 09:03, Mike Timbrell wrote: You mean we should make changes because someone in Poland gets beaned by a piece of wreckage? FROM: [email protected] [2] [mailto:[email protected] [3]] ON BEHALF OF Matthew Scutter SENT: Wednesday, 4 June 2014 8:15 AM TO: Discussion of issues relating to Soaring in Australia. SUBJECT: Re: [Aus-soaring] Liability to public. Turnpoints are usually over populated areas such as towns. Turnpoints are naturally an area of higher collision risk because of converging headings. Pilots tend to outland/get low near turnpoints because of tunnel vision or trying round the turnpoints efficiently in high wind. Perhaps turnpoints shouldn't be over populated areas/landmarks in competitions in this age of GPS navigation? On Tue, Jun 3, 2014 at 4:56 PM, Derek Ruddock wrote: Lookout, lookout, lookout… FROM: [email protected] [5] [mailto:[email protected] [6]] ON BEHALF OF Christopher McDonnell SENT: Monday, 2 June 2014 6:52 PM TO: [email protected] [7] SUBJECT: [Aus-soaring] Liability to public. http://www.thenews.pl/1/9/Artykul/172564,Pilot-killed-in-glider-tournament [8] _______________________________________________ Aus-soaring mailing list [email protected] [9] To check or change subscription details, visit: http://lists.internode.on.net/mailman/listinfo/aus-soaring [10] _______________________________________________ Aus-soaring mailing list [email protected] [11] To check or change subscription details, visit: http://lists.internode.on.net/mailman/listinfo/aus-soaring [12] _______________________________________________ Aus-soaring mailing list [email protected] [13] To check or change subscription details, visit: http://lists.internode.on.net/mailman/listinfo/aus-soaring [14] _______________________________________________ Aus-soaring mailing list [email protected] [15] To check or change subscription details, visit: http://lists.internode.on.net/mailman/listinfo/aus-soaring [16] ------------------------- Email sent using Optus Webmail Links: ------ [1] mailto:[email protected] [2] mailto:[email protected] [3] mailto:[email protected] [4] mailto:[email protected] [5] mailto:[email protected] [6] mailto:[email protected] [7] mailto:[email protected] [8] http://www.thenews.pl/1/9/Artykul/172564,Pilot-killed-in-glider-tournament [9] mailto:[email protected] [10] http://lists.internode.on.net/mailman/listinfo/aus-soaring [11] mailto:[email protected] [12] http://lists.internode.on.net/mailman/listinfo/aus-soaring [13] mailto:[email protected] [14] http://lists.internode.on.net/mailman/listinfo/aus-soaring [15] mailto:[email protected] [16] http://lists.internode.on.net/mailman/listinfo/aus-soaring
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