Day at Cumberland

[Paul Tjaden]

I swore to myself that I wasn't going to get involved in this but I guess I'm too stupid or weak willed to follow through so here goes......

First let me say that Lauren was absolutely NOT trying to suggest that anyone mentioned in this thread necessarily had poor flying skills. She only wanted to suggest that anytime any of us have a less than perfect launch, landing, etc. that we need to make absolutely certain that there was nothing we could have done to prevent said occurence. If we simply convince ourselves that the conditions were totally to blame and nothing we could have done would have helped, then we miss the opportunity to learn from our mistakes and we are set up to repeat them. Last Sunday I had a sweet flight and I placed a post on this forum about it. What I didn't mention was that it didn't have such a great ending. The day was light and variable and I landed early enough that the LZ was still quite active. I did my best to try to get down in between thermals popping off but still managed to catch a bad cycle. After chasing the windsock more than 90 degrees away from my originally intended direction for final I still found myself with a slight downwind as I neared the ground. Most of us know that REALLY crappy feeling of watching the ground fly by WAY too fast while at the same time feeling the back pressure build up against our hands letting us know that the glider is about to stall. Bottom line....I handled it poorly. Instead of doing all the things I normally do to insure at least a reasonable landing, I reverted to old bad habits and whacked hard. I was lucky to come out with no damage to the glider and only a slightly sprained right shouder.

Now I could just walk away and say I got screwed by the conditions and let it go (given better conditions my landing record is quite good) or I could recognize that occasionally the conditions are going to try to screw me and I need to be prepared for when that happens. Something I like to remind myself when I am tempted to blame bad conditions on a poor outcome is to ask myself if a true sky god could have handled things better. Could Jonni Durand have pulled off a good landing faced with what I had last Sunday? I'd be willing to bet he could have stopped it on a dime. So next time you're tempted to write off something as "shit happens" make sure you're being totally honest with yourself and you believe that no one could have done it better.

Paul

[hepcat1989]

Right on.... You're right.
Thanks for the insight Paul.
Shawn.

[mcelrah]

Concur that we always have to keep striving to improve our technique - and that you have to choke the beast that's trying to swallow you right up to the end (as in the famous cartoon of the frog being eaten by the heron) - but we will never eliminate all risk from this sport. We all obsessively read accident reports looking for the pilot error so we can say to ourselves "that won't happen to me because I always/never...", but we're fooling ourselves: without being in the category of reckless or unsafe pilots, we are always placing ourselves at some degree of irreducible risk. (Yeah, I know: we also can learn from accident reports and avoid repeating at least that same mistake if there was one - but you get what I'm driving at...) - Hugh

[deveil]

was well stated. IMHO

'not providing any additional value here, just adding one more "amen" to the chorus.
a disciplined perspective such as that both improves one And keeps one as safe as possible (nodding to Hugh there).

(the guy is just a WildMan when he loses control like that! )

[deveil]

all-in-all, i'd say yous guys conduct a pretty durn good safety meeting.