Hook-in Failure discussion

[Tad Eareckson]

FYI: The posts within this topic have been split off from the original topic, regarding
a hook-in failure, in which they first appeared.

I've done this because there is a new rule of etiquette for these forums:

Unless you were witness to an accident, or you have asked a QUESTION of the
pilot involved and s/he has invited your feedback by replying, please limit any posts
that you might make within an accident-report topic to expressions of sympathy and
support. No topic hijacking!

We all have strong feelings about accidents, procedures, risk, etc. If you want to vent
about some aspect of the sport in response to an accident report, then fine, make your
feelings known (in a courteous way that does not disrespect the entire flying community).

But unless you are engaged in a conversation with the pilot involved, please do so by
creating a NEW topic. Note that you can always link back to the accident-report topic,
to provide context.

Apologies for the long-neglected update to the forum rules; I hope to get to that soon,
and will add this rule of etiquette.

Now, back to the hook-in flamefest! :D
_________________________________________________________________________

>
Oz Report Forum

Unhooked Death Again - Change our Methods Now?

2008/09/05 04:24:06

Fahrvergnuegen

Perhaps the dreadfully convenient carabiner is the root of all problems? It makes the process of unhooking too easy...
<

There are traces of intelligent life on this planet.

[RedBaron]

Tad, do you have to push your agenda every time? Just because once in a blue moon someone forgets to hook in doesn't mean there's anything wrong with our methods. The other day I was having a coffee at Starbucks' when a woman got hit by a car right in front of my eyes. She forgot to look both ways and and so did the driver. BAMM! Humans don't need wings to die (or fly), man. Anyway, pilots will die as long as there is hang gliding. Padlocks instead of 'biners, SS gliders instead of topless gliders, big fields instead of small fields, it really doesn't matter. We wouldn't be flying if it wasn't dangerous.

[hepcat1989]

.

[Tad Eareckson]

Janni,

Yeah, I most emphatically do.

I've never been to that quarter of the country and didn't know that guy from Adam's off ox. It still brought me to tears reading some of that AHGA traffic.

It sickened me to think that after decades of working on this problem and FINALLY - last November - coming up with a minor lose / huge win / small win /small win solution that I didn't do enough to bring it to folk's attention globally.

It makes me furious that none of y'all (much as I love many of you individually) muthah fuckahs did SQUAT to help me with this.

THIS WAS NOT AN AVIATION FATALITY. THIS IS A FUCKING STUPID DESIGN FLAW THAT WE KNEW ABOUT.

To get killed in an aviation accident you always need to do three things wrong in short order. To get killed this way you only get to make one very predictable and human mistake.

To quote Larry West after I brought the Bill Floyd horror story to the attention of the skysailingtowing forum not that many months ago:

>
I'm shaking my head thinking that hooking in should just NOT be one of things that kills or maims us. There are so many other things in flying to do that without something so simple being one of them.
<

I've used the speed link for all of my flights this season (all six of them - if you must know). I've already violated one of my own rules for it - I've walked away from the glider before tightening the screw which secures the locking plate. (But I didn't forget and there is little chance of that being a deal breaker anyway.)

It ain't a perfect solution but we knew that already from Marc's report of the incident with the bolt-on suspension.

But I'll tell you this much. This operation is a minor pain and you tend to remember whether or not you've done it. It compels the Aussie method and discourages cheating.

Two days before Kunio was killed I had composed most of a letter I was going to send to Mike Meier covering this issue. One day before I was talking about it to the kid who was replacing the front tires and doing the alignment on my car with the peculiar racks (bicyclist / motorcycle racer / rock climber - hot to trot to Ridgely).

Yeah, there is plenty wrong with our methods - from our gasoline eating, downtube breaking, airtime killing weak links to our releases that can't be accessed in emergencies and won't function under load to these "dreadfully convenient" carabiners that are lurking around everywhere and killing people like clockwork. And - regarding the last point - we're just sitting around with our thumbs up our asses waiting to see WHEN - not IF - the next one of our beloved friends will get snuffed.

My "agenda" is to break that cycle.

Shawn,

Yeah, but there's a lot of stupidity that has already been designed out of it. But the solutions just continue to rot on the shelf.

[Gene]

I think that we need to recite the simple checklist verbally each time before launch. " HPBC", if we can remember that far back. It is simple enough and effective.
Gene

[Tad Eareckson]

Gene,

Lemme stay rabid for another moment, then back off to something more civilized.

BULLSHIT.

By this I mean that it is quite possible that everyone within earshot has trained himself and/or developed procedures which absolutely guarantee that he will not start moving down a ramp or slope or off a cliff without being hooked in.

I myself did. Very early in my flying career I trained myself to ALWAYS lift the glider until it stopped before me feet started moving.

So maybe everyone here is bulletproof. That doesn't alter the fact that using a carabiner to connect harness to glider for foot launched flight has been, is now, and always will be an inherently DANGEROUS way to put a plane together.

Checklists - written and spoken, hang checks, hook-in checks, Aussie method, launch monitors, the cards that the AHGA guys are all gonna transfer between their noses and carabiners are all work-arounds to guard against a design flaw.

It used to be possible to partially assemble a Wills Wing glider to the point at which it could get you airborne but could and did fall apart during, at the end of, or after the flight. They put out an advisory and then designed the problem out of existence. They didn't fuck around with work-arounds.

If you proceed with the same work-arounds that we've been using for decades you can totally guarantee that you - individually - are one hundred percent safe from this failure. HOWEVER - You will also ABSOLUTELY TOTALLY GUARANTEE that there will be ZERO reduction in the hook-in failure fatality rate.

Use a bolt-on system or speed link in all circumstances possible. Around here that means pretty much in all circumstances. Don't do it to make yourself safer - you're probably OK as it is. Do it to set and example, influence a trend, and make hang gliding safer. Do it so that somebody else's wife and kids don't have to watch a nice afternoon turn to hell before their eyes in an instant.

If you don't give a flying fuck about your fellow pilots then do it for selfish reasons. You'll have less weight and drag and pick up an extra 0.3 percent of performance and airtime. That's why the bolt-on systems were developed in the first place.

Janni,

Do you really want next of kin sorts of people reading your Sentence 2?

[jimrooney]

Kudos Janni.
Best post on the topic I've ever seen. I couldn't agree more.

Jim

[chgpa]

I will not tolerate posts within this topic that are liberally sprinkled with phrases such as:

muthah fuckahs

BULLSHIT

If you don't give a flying fuck about your fellow pilots

Tad, do you notice that no-one **else** is doing this? Even those who
disagree with you?

If you cannot make your points in a courteous and well-reasoned way, your forum privileges
will be revoked.

Understood?

MarkC

[Tad Eareckson]

Yeah, OK Mark - nobody else is using four letter based words to attack me AT PRESENT.

Different folk find different things offensive.

What I find stunningly offensive is that our little community has just accepted that we're gonna to continue to kill people at the same fairly regular intervals for the same TOTALLY predictable reasons and ignore a solution which - it has been agreed - will reduce that rate.

And I haven't heard ANYONE disagree with my point that switching to bolt- or screw-on systems will make this sport a lot safer. Just the apparent sentiment from a couple of folk that these accidents don't really matter much.

Janni has just estimated the failure to hook in accident rate as once in a blue moon. A blue moon comes around an average of about once every 2.4 years so that's a damn good assessment of what we're doing - much better, unfortunately, than your post Bob Gillisse stab at ten years, especially if you throw in Bill Floyd and Kunio (and both of those are only one degree's worth of separation from the local crowd).

One would think that "your (my) agenda" of reducing the frequency of these horrible needless accidents would fall way more within the bailiwick of the MHGA Flight Director than mine but... Go figure. I guess this sport would be less enjoyable if we didn't kill someone or amputate both of his legs every once in a while.

Does anybody know how to get in touch with Deanna Priday? I'd like to get her take on what she finds offensive in this discussion. Maybe the push to get this act cleaned up needs to come from outside of our incestuous little cult.

[Matthew]

OK, Tad. If you wish to promote change and encourage safety, then write an article for the USHPA magazine and the Oz Report--or become a Regional Diredtor or USHPA officer. Insluting and arguing with pilots on a local flying forum doesn't seem to be doing the trick.

Matthew

[Batman]

Aircraft Crashes Record Office (ACRO)
The Geneva-based Aircraft Crashes Record Office (ACRO) compiles statistics on aviation accidents of aircraft capable of carrying more than six passengers, not including helicopters, balloons, or fighter airplanes. The ACRO announced that the year 2007 was the safest year in aviation since 1963 in terms of number of accidents.[1] There had been 136 accidents registered (compared to 164 in 2006), resulting in a total of 965 deaths (compared to 1,293 in 2006). 2004 was the year with the lowest number of fatalities since the end of World War II, with 766 deaths. The year with most fatalities was 1972, with 3,214 deaths.

year deaths nr. of accidents
2007 965 136
2006 1,293 164
2005 1,454 184
2004 766 165
2003 1,224 198
2002 1,399 173
2001 1,535 187
2000 1,567 179
1999 1,130 198
1972 3,214 -

In theory, all of these aircraft have associated checklists and pilots that "Should" be following them. I guess we shouldn't fly at all because accidents happen. Maybe if we pointed our fingers at the pilots whose errors cost them their life instead of trying to force some false sense of belief that there is an infallible system out there, you would be less frustrated with the world. People have been trying to build a better mousetrap since the creation of time. As long as there is a human somewhere in the equation, human error will be a primary factor in causing an accident. As a pilot who has been around all forms of general and military aviation, I have a hard time blaming anyone but the pilot for not doing a hang check. If an ejection seat fails to work properly because the pilot didn't arm it prior to flight, you don't blame the makers of the ejection seat. Tad, I think you need to focus on personal responsibility and attention to detail instead of blaming it on the system. The system worked properly, the pilot just didn't engage it.

[Batman]

P.S. Matthew, I've never been so insluted in my life!

[brianvh]

Hey Chris, I've spent years and countless bottles of booze trying to get inslutted and you get it for free?! It's just not fair.

[chgpa]

Yeah, OK Mark - nobody else is using four letter based words to attack me AT PRESENT.

But if they *had* been Tad, they would have been just as publicly rebuked.

A couple months ago I was forced into a more active moderator role. At that time,
I warned people that the types of mean-spirited posts which were flying around
would not be tolerated. That was followed up with PMs to several individuals. Since
then the overall tone seems to have improved, and the arguments are more civilized.

But now you are dragging it back down again. So this is a warning, you are
on thin ice. As would anyone else be who was posting in such a way, especially
within a topic as serious and sad as this one.

MarkC

[Tad Eareckson]

Mark,

None of those quotes - nor anything else I've written in this thread - represented an individual attack.

Carlinesque terms aren't any more evidence that something malicious is going on than their absence is indicative of the converse.

Matthew,

I haven't actually inslutted anyone yet on this thread - 'cept, of course, for everyone collectively.

But, yeah, the little snowballs I've rolled around here are growing either not at all or - at best - at a depressingly slow rate.

I can hear the collective "Gawd - There goes the neighborhood." groans as I write but I have been preparing to go on the Oz Report ever since Fahrvergnuegen gave me a glimmer of hope that someone else might have a clue as to the best way to address the core of this problem.

Chris,

About the time I was getting into this sport the expression "full luff dive" was starting to disappear from the lingo 'cause - via the advent defined tips and reflex bridles (what people now refer to as "sprogs") - a very popular means of killing oneself was engineered out of existence.

And, again, the reason gliders no longer fold up in flight is - not because we've evolved into more gene pool worthy life forms - but because the control frame corners were redesigned such that the setup procedure is now idiot proof. They're also stronger, better suited to downtube replacement, cleaner, and more expensive - win/win/win/win/lose.

So people - in fact - HAVE built better mousetraps and gliders and tow systems are a lot better and safer than they were in 1980. They don't have to be infallible - just less fallible. That's what I'm shooting for here.

The analogy I'm seeing is...

Me:

"We're killing a lot of pilots 'cause they're unable to get out of the jet in time. I've developed this seat which blasts them clear instantaneously. How 'bout we start using them."

You:

"If they'd preflight their planes properly and watch where they were going they wouldn't need to get out of them."

Humans are idiots and pilots are particularly human. But I don't necessarily see a person's chronic or momentary stupidity alone as a good reason for him to get his legs amputated.

No, the system is not working properly - it's broke.

That piece of hardware was designed for climbing - not hang gliding. It was incorporated into our sport on Day 1 in a primitive environment and under some erroneous assumptions.

Hang gliders - in the Upper Cretaceous Period - started gliding down small hills, never getting very high off the ground nor remaining aloft for very long. The idea of connecting the harness to the glider before climbing into it would have seemed - and been - ludicrous. The carabiner was an obvious choice - and it's still what most folk are gonna want for flying Jockeys Ridge, Taylor Hill, or Smithsburg.

As soon as we started flying high and long, carabiners started killing us. But no one rethought the configuration.

A topless glider with a bolt-on pod is designed for soaring from the ground up. It doesn't have a trace of bastardization with another non related sport. We have yet to launch such a combination in which the connection has not been made.

Maybe after fifteen or twenty years as more and more people start adopting bolt-on systems for performance reasons hang gliding will notice that all the failure to connect accidents involve carabiners. But by then another six or eight blue moons will have come and gone.

If, however, we demonstrate some level of intelligence and immediately limit the use of carabiners to situations in which there is substantial utility to their "dreadful convenience"...

[Batman]

I'm sorry you see it that way Tad. The carabiners have NOT been killing pilots. The pilots lack of hooking in to said caribiners have been killing pilots. I'm sure you will point out some failure of a caribiner sometime in the past history of hang gliding, but it has not been the norm. You don't blame the car when a drunk gets in it and runs over a pedestrian. The car was only a pawn in the event. Same with the carabiner, when used properly, the carabiner isn't killing anyone. In fact, its the lack of using the carabiner that is killing people.

While I understand your point about engineering improvements (luff lines, sprogs, etc), this is an apples to oranges comparison. Aircraft are much more aerodynamic now than they were when the Wright Brothers first flew at Kitty Hawk. THAT is an engineering improvement. If you can design a failsafe "Hook-In" that takes human element completely out of it, then THAT would be an engineering improvement. A pilot failing to hook in to a perfectly good system is not a failure of the system. Its a failure of the pilots.

If you really want to get down to the gnats ass, what we need to focus on is Training, Techniques, & Procedures (TTPs). The failure in failing to hook-in is a failure in a pilot's awareness that not hooking in is going to potentially kill him. Instead of changing a system that works when used properly, what needs to be changed is how a pilot is trained to make this not happen. Fortunately, this is ingrained into many people's noggin's and they check multiple times before each flight. In both civilian & military aviation, pilots are required to use their checklist for preflight. Due to the "avante garde" nature of hang gliding, we don't have a physical checklist. If we did, would people actually use it in the first place? Once again, not a failure of the system, but a failure of the pilot.

As I said, and it bears repeating. We need to focus on personal/pilot responsibility and attention to detail. The system is working if used the way it was designed.

[Tad Eareckson]

Once upon a time there was some Air Force fighter jet sort of thing that had a couple of rudder control linkage elements which connected above the main structural beam running back to the tail. Space was tight and the connections had to be secured out of sight of the guy with the wrenches standing below.

They were designed so that it was just as easy to hook them up backwards as it was to do it correctly.

Not surprisingly...

One guy discovered that he was entering a parallel antimatter universe as he was rolling up to speed and was able to abort the takeoff.

The next guy wasn't so lucky.

The enlisted guy with the wrenches was - of course - devastated.

The sonsabitches with the brass charged him with dereliction of duty and otherwise degraded him to the point he put a bullet in his head. In my personal opinion there were folk that needed to be stood up in front of a wall and none of them were this poor maintenance crewman.

Yeah, I guess post overhaul and pre flight checks were missed but a goddam ten-year-old should have enough brains to figure out something along the lines of "Let's use left-hand threads on the port rod and right on the starboard!"

When I hear about the pedestrian killed by the drunk in the car I like to start asking questions like...

Was the driver's blood alcohol level a factor?

Did the pedestrian leap out from behind a lamp post into the left lane of the Interstate?

Would the pedestrian have gotten off with relatively minor injuries if it hadn't been for the overly phallic hood ornament which punched through his ribs and speared his heart?

I'm guessing you're not a big Nader fan but sometimes - yeah - you blame the car.

Lemme tell you how to design a plane...

First you make it clean, light, about one and a half times as strong as it needs to be to handle the stress that can be anticipating within its operating range, and as simple and cheap as possible.

Then you make it as safe and idiot proof as possible.

(And damn near everything you do is a tradeoff.)

Take a look at:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/aerotowrelease/

Carabiner / Speed Link

Top of the stack currently - stowed in the Miscellaneous set.

The little thing in the middle can rip your glider apart with well over a third of its strength in reserve. Call it a dozen Gs for some of your heavier pilots.

The huge piece o' crap surrounding it can rip six or seven gliders apart simultaneously - that's certifiably insane.

The carabiner has an auto locking gate. We have absolutely zero use for a locking gate. It only makes the glider more dangerous - in two ways. It makes it harder to separate from the glider in an emergency and it can damage the bridle of the parachute of those pilots who have adapted the bizarre practice of configuring the carabiner backwards.

The carabiner weighs over three and a third times what the speed link does and is obviously a whole lot stickier moving through the air than is its counterpart.

Ignoring, for the moment, the key issue that the speed link greatly discourages one from getting into the harness before it's connected to the glider - Which one of these chunks of hardware do you think an aircraft designer not in need of a padded cell would select for the purpose?

This IS an engineering improvement.

Brian HAS developed a failsafe harness concept but it ain't retrofittable. What I've got isn't as idiot proof but anyone using a carabiner can easily and cheaply adapt it.

With respect to written checklists - I don't/won't use one. I suspect my reason is behind the reason the culture as a whole doesn't and won't.

The gliders are so simple that they're either together or they're not and the sorts of things I'm notoriously good at missing (helmet buckled?) are insignificant little annoyances. There's only one really good way to kill yourself with a missed preflight item and the launch dolly, the Aussie method, and the lift glider until you feel the tug trick all take care of that.

And the speed link compels the Aussie method and you tend to be very aware of the status of the connection 'cause - unlike the carabiner - it takes a little time and effort.

Our two respective foci - design and TTPs - are not mutually exclusive. I'm just trying to make the TTPs simpler, shorter, and less critical.

And...

If you don't think you'll get significantly better performance with the Dacron suspension webbing - use it because it's UV resistant and thus safer.

If you don't think the speed link will make you significantly safer - use it because you'll get better performance.

Come to think of it - that's probably how I should be selling this concept. Don't bother mentioning safety at all.

[brianvh]

Tad;
I think you are right on all points. There are two reasons you meet resistance:

a) It takes more work each time. Though you are pitching this as a selling point, those of us who use the Aussie method already don't see enough benefits to make our lives harder, and those who the rest of us haven't been able to convert to the Aussie method insist they have good reasons not to change (though I disagree with them).
b) You keep proclaiming that anyone who doesn't agree with you is an idiot. This only makes them want to prove you an idiot. By building these walls into your argument, maybe you are.

If you had just said "hey, I'm using this method that guarantees I'm using the Aussie approach, it cuts down on drag, doesn't threaten my bridle, and is plenty strong enough for the job for much cheaper and lighter" and replied to challenges with non-emotional facts and numbers, you might start to convince people. You usually start that way, but see any disagreement as an almost personal attack and then degrade. I will not publicly speculate on why you do this.

[brianvh]

I should add that your last post was the right way, which is why I, at least, finally saw a reason to come in with a positive response. I think it would be good if manufacturers came up with a way to ensure we don't go walking around with our cockpits hanging off our behonkus instead of attached to our wing to being with. Your method is pointing in the right direction.

[ebalow98]

This discussion is really reminding me of something else that even those non-pilots can relate to. I'm sure many of you are aware of the rising numbers of babies being locked in their parents cars on hot summer days. This is naturally a very painful experience for the parents when they return to the car.

While the occasional ignorant parent would do this every once in a while 20 years ago, that isn't just the case any more. It seems several times a year, a mother or father will simply forget about the baby because his or her mind is on work or getting a haircut or whatever else.

So why the rise of late of this occurrence? Well when I was a two year old, I remember perfectly well jumping up and down in the back seat of my car while my mom was driving. Nowadays my mother would most likely be thrown in jail for allowing such behavior while she was driving.

But today we strap the kids down and put them in the back seat where we can't easily see them. They have to be back there to be safe from the airbag if it deploys during an accident.

And now with the parent off to work if the baby nods off and isn't making any noises, it's all too easy to let it slip the mind. And of course when it makes the news, the media berates the parents as being cruel and evil, when in fact it's a extremely depressing case of "out of site, out of mind".

Just like with the cars, you don't see motor companies trying to come up with new and improved ways to protect infants from this occurrence--they instead continue to put the blame on the parents. But the expectation of being "perfect" when you're on 3 hours of sleep for months straight due to a colicky baby is a high expectation indeed.

But this brings me to a thought. My car knows when my seatbelt isn't buckled. It dings and blinks and otherwise complains until I satisfy it's request. I'm assuming there's some type of relay in the locking mechanism that detects an open or closed circuit.

How hard would this really be to implement on a harness? If the beaner is opened, some sort of annoying buzzing sound would help not only the pilot but also the folks nearby immediately know someone was standing on launch unhooked.

Ed Balow

[Batman]

We already have an annoying buzzing sound ... Tad

[theflyingdude]

We already have an annoying buzzing sound ... Tad

Where's that damn flyswatter when you need it?

JR

[Matthew]

Pre-flighting your glider and harness is a standard protocol.

Doing a hang check and a hook-in check is also a standard protocol every time you fly.

Parents don't have standard protocols for child safety.

Maybe they should.

Matthew

[markc]

Come on people, if you are going to respond to this topic, then make it worth
reading, along the lines of Brian's and Ed's replies.

One-line posts to merely vent about someone else don't contribute anything.
And depending on my own frustration-level for the day, they might even attract
my <drumroll>moderator wrath</drumroll>. We don't want that, right?

MarkC

[dbodner]

Come on people, if you are going to respond to this topic, then make it worth
reading, along the lines of Brian's and Ed's replies.

OK, how's this?

Responding to Batman, I never like hearing 'it's a training issue.' (I know I'm oversimplifying your answer) I work in electronic business tools for the navy. (I could tell you about them, but you'd fall over backwards and die of boredom before you hit the ground.) Inevitably, people don't use the systems correctly. And the call comes out, "it's a training issue." I say, it makes no sense to train a constantly changing workforce of several thousand or several hundred thousand people to use the tool correctly when the tool should've been designed to make it impossible to be used incorrectly--or at least been more intuitively obvious. Making the tool easier to use is always going to be the more elegant answer.

Having said that, I'm interested in the downsides of Tad's approach. As BVH points out, there's the convenience factor at launch--can't underestimate that. It would also make it harder to swap gliders; the 'biner system allows all kinds of ingenious (and possibly dangerous) height adjustments. Is it harder to unhook? Think of having just landed in the LZ. You want to move your glider. You either have to move it while still hooked in, or you move it after you "disrobe." Not the easiest way to move the glider. Anything else?