the best thing you can do is minimize the areas where complacency can get you in trouble.Take yourself out of the equation where possible.A good example is hooking my harness to the glider when setting up and never unhooking it until im done flying for the day. _________________ I have a dead hot water heater in my front yard.
The very worst thing about complacency is that we do it to ourselves. We can't enjoy the luxury of blaming it external influences, we just have to suck it up and realize that we have to fix the problem and give the source a swift mental kick in the ass.
Would it not also be true that this the best thing about complacency? Because it is WE who do it to ourselves then it is also within our grasp to stop engaging in this subtle and often overlooked form of risk-taking behavior that leads us into accidents. When the forces are external they may be beyond our reach to address and defend against. That may be a luxury from the standpoint of alleviating personal guilt and shame but is a poverty in terms of our resources to protect ourselves.
There is also the related matter of group complacency and our failure to take seriously when a fellow pilot either has let his own guard too far down or is taking on too much risk. Let's not turn a blind eye to our fellow pilots.
The very worst thing about complacency is that we do it to ourselves. We can't enjoy the luxury of blaming it external influences, we just have to suck it up and realize that we have to fix the problem and give the source a swift mental kick in the ass.
Would it not also be true that this the best thing about complacency? Because it is WE who do it to ourselves then it is also within our grasp to stop engaging in this subtle and often overlooked form of risk-taking behavior that leads us into accidents. When the forces are external they may be beyond our reach to address and defend against. That may be a luxury from the standpoint of alleviating personal guilt and shame but is a poverty in terms of our resources to protect ourselves.
There is also the related matter of group complacency and our failure to take seriously when a fellow pilot either has let his own guard too far down or is taking on too much risk. Let's not turn a blind eye to our fellow pilots.
I guess you could say there is some truth to that, but the problem with the origin being ourselves, it can be very difficult to notice a bad habit creeping in unless someone else points it out or have an unfortunate incident because of it.
Your final statement is very true. How many times do we hear pilots talking about someone who has consistantly bad launches or landings or bad decision making, but they refer to the pilot as a "good pilot" because of their flying skills while in the air. We can't afford to forget that the flight starts at the same moment we begin our launch and doesn't end until we are safely back on the ground again. We can't be afraid to talk to our fellow pilots when we see bad/dangerous habits. It's worth the possibility of offending them when we consider the downside of not saying something. _________________ Paul H
U2 160 USHPA # 51178 KE7VOG
H4, FL, AT, PL, FSL, RLF, TUR, X-C, CL, AWCL, 360, HA,
USN ret. A & P mechanic
I think that with complacency, it is not specific to your whole routine on launch, the launch to the flying, till your feet touch the ground. It can cause a problem or multiple in any aspect of this sport. It effects your "margin" for error. And can be a killer equal to if not worse than intermediate syndrome. _________________ Always a student.
"The mountain doesn't care what that card in your wallet says." - Bruce Stobbe
I think that with complacency, it is not specific to your whole routine on launch, the launch to the flying, till your feet touch the ground. It can cause a problem or multiple in any aspect of this sport. It effects your "margin" for error. And can be a killer equal to if not worse than intermediate syndrome.
...Feynman is awesome! But why is the phrase "near miss" absurd?
"Near miss" literally means a collision that was nearly missed.
"Near miss" is an idiom. English doesn't follow the same kinds of rules that mathematics does. _________________ H4 + various skills (only foot-launch so far)
WW UltraSport 147, WW Falcon2 170, PacAir Vision Mark IV 17
My HG wiki profile and my flying blog
Just thought of a good grave stone epitaph: "I've been lucky all my life!"
It's funny how people and other pilots accuse me of being lucky given all the adventures I've had flying X/C. I remind them that every day I wake up breathing I consider myself lucky.
it scares me when i yell launching and the next thing i know i am in the air heading towards the nearest form of lift, wondering if i even thought about every phase of launching .
complacency is a big unseen accident waiting to happen
I just reviewed my landing from Saturday as it wasn't great to say the least - crap would be an accurate description. What concerns me is that at the time I moved my right hand to the down tube and then both hands up the downtubes (too soon), I have no recollection of doing so. It was an automatic reaction, and likely if I wasn't on such a forgiving glider (Falcon 3), it could have ended up a lot worse. Most of my landings are a lot better than this FYI, but they should all be better than this. Now I know for next time to get out of auto mode and stay fully aware of the entire landing.
Good awareness spitfire. When stabilized in ground effect is when I move the last hand off the base bar.
I didn't realise how much time you have to move the hand up till I saw Steve Moyes landing my new Lightsport 3 after the test fly. To my eyes it looked like he was moving in slow motion as he moved his hand off the base bar up to the upright coming to a perfect top landing at Stanwell. _________________ Sonic 165
Lightsport 3
Malibu 188
My youtube channel
http://www.youtube.com/user/relate2#p/u
I would say, "Your landing was good. Your approach and setup was crap!"
My approach wasn't the best but the reason was because I was headed to the LZ pretty low. I was heading to the staging area but too low to make it so went from upwind to DBF. No-one does S turns here, I think it's because of the power lines just in front of the LZ. The tandem instructor thought it was a pretty good improvised approach, given that I couldn't make it to staging _________________ H-3
the best thing you can do is minimize the areas where complacency can get you in trouble.Take yourself out of the equation where possible.A good example is hooking my harness to the glider when setting up and never unhooking it until im done flying for the day.
complacency is when you think you hooked your harness to the glider, crawl into it, pick up the glider and launch _________________ Explore nature from the eyes of an Eagle
Just thought of a good grave stone epitaph: "I've been lucky all my life!"
:thumbs up:
They say it's better to be lucky then skillful but don't count on it. The bone yards are full of pilots who weren't lucky. Skill and good technique will get us through a lot more crap. Not that I havn't had some lucky moments in 34 yrs of flying.
Having one near miss is not being complacent. Repeating it or flying into the same situtation over and over is complacence.
I see it all the time pilots have shaky launches and think it's all good, even after being in the trees multiple times.
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thanks for the laugh, we are all to serious at times, just what we needed