Astir 8,
What you say is very true, and perhaps I or someone else should have pointed that out earlier. I have been saying all along that the incidence of cloud flying by gliders is very very small in real terms and therefore, the main thrust of the discussion appears to be centered in the extreme minority of cases when glider pilots do go in cloud.
Risk, as any safety engineer will tell you, can be quantified by probability (likelyhood of occurance) X severity of outcome. There are levels of acceptable risk and there are levels of unacceptable risk which require mitigation in order to drive those risks to an acceptable level and ideally As Low As Reasonably Practicable (ALARP). Is one in a million acceptable? is one in a thousand acceptable? Or one in ten million accepatable? It would frighten many of you to know some of the levels of accepatble risk applied to aircraft, systems and procedures in use by civil and military manufacturers and authorities.
It would be an interesting study, rather than just a difference of opinion, which would perhaps provide the best focus for discussion on the perceived level of risk associated with the likelihood of a catastrophic event (GA/Glider collision) whilst flying in IMC - but that ain't going to happen in the short term. Therefore, what we have is a difference of opinion of perceptible risk.
I could sit and do the sums - but I'd then end up having to justify those figures and it would all get really messy, suffice to say that if the risk was 'unacceptable' to the CAA, then they would have introduced procedural mitigation years ago. Therefore, and as the statistics would seem to bear out (ie number of incidences over time) the level of risk is acceptable to the controlling authorities. (by the way level of acceptable risk of a catastrophic event can be as low as 1 in 100,000 (1x10^-5).
It would therefore appear that this thread centers around that fact that the perception of risk is different for power pilots and glider pilots:
My perception is that there is greater risk of colliding with another glider in cloud than that a powered aircraft, and the overall risk is incredible (so small as not to be an issue). By that it MY perception, It is based on the fact over the last 600 flights I have only taken 9 cloud climbs: I spend probably less that 5 minutes in cloud (climbing at say 400ft/minutes); My current (2005) average flight length is around 55 minutes, in which I have logged 79 flights this year to date.
So over the past 600 flights. 0.015% of those flights had a cloud climb and on those flights I spent less that 0.09% in cloud (and used the radio every time). Rounding up, then one in a thousand times I fly I come into the Cloud Flying risk zone. (thats a hell of a lot smaller than the risk of being hit by/collision by GA in VFR, of which the risk zone is 999:1000!!!!
Don't forget thats just the risk zone..... then you add the likelihood of collision, and I'd bet my bottom dollar that the figures are better than 1:10^-9, which is more than acceptable TO ME!