Originally Posted by
Pace
That is why I say that if you are not equipt to be in cloud and carry equiptment to minimise the risk to the rest of us you should not be there as the MK1 eyeball is of no use in cloud.
I would love to know why the glider regulations stipulate a parachute in cloud ? Is this incase they collide with another aircraft or the pilots are not competant at instrument flying and may loose control? It is madness.
I think the glider/IMC focus is unreasonable. I don't think there has ever been a power/glider colision in cloud. Powered aircraft aren't required to have a transponder either - so we all to a certain extent may be engaged in russian roulette.
(on the other hand, the glider community seems to persistently ignore the fact that there are lots of high speed aircraft (particularly above 10000 feet) that have no possibility of avoiding an aircraft visually acquired at say a mile - that in most countries other than the UK ARE in controlled airspace, which is managed effectively the same as the UK Class G airspace above 10k and do have just as much right to be there - Do the math on a 350 knot closure - target spotted at 1 mile, 5 seconds to decide climb or descent and crank in a 2 G climb or zero G push over - and you get a bit more than 300 ft separation, 10 seconds to see it, think about the pax in a zero g push and all you have is glider spar sticking out of your window)
I am not a glider pilot (other than one enjoyable weekend), but I believe the parachute requirement can only exist due to the rellatively high risk of an unrecoverable loss of control. This can occur due to
1 - Airframe damange recovering from an unsual attitude
2 - Airframe damage due to a collision
3 - Being unable to recover from an unusual attitude.
Given the minimal attitude kit for a glider to be 'IMC' capable, there must be a reasonable number of loss of control incidents. The relatively slow speed and easy ability to detect uncoordinated flight, I suspect allows a much higher degree of recovery from typically fatal spam can IMC loss of control incidents - however, not such a high level that they don't peridoically (in the words of another poster) spin out the bottom of cloud - hence the need for the chute.
I suspect as well they have a high collision risk with each other (consistent with the statistics) due to several operating in cloud in close proximity (but at low speed).
I would love to see a practical and economic collision avoidance system and totally believe in the fallibility of the Mark I eyeball, but if we count up the number of helicopter and powered aircraft fatalities involving a glider in IMC it is going to be a number less than 1 - there are other areas worthy of the attention - like why we can't see each other in the circuit, like in the last year why operating in IMC seems to be a problem for both helos and fixed wing.