How to set a Record

Risk awareness

Why can't we get a handle on this safety thing?
Mike Meier (USA) 1998

Mike Meier is in the leading team of the hang glider manufacturer Wills Wing and chairman of the Hang Gliding Manufacturers Association. Here he explores why overall pilot safety statistics don't seem to change. He theorizes that over time our perception of "acceptable risk" gets lower and lower because repeated success with less than "100% safe" decisions changes our definition of "100% safe".

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If I were to ask you to characterize the view that the "uninformed public" has of hang gliding, what might you say? You might say that they think of hang gliding as a "death sport" or, at the very least, an "unreasonably unsafe activity". You might say that they think hang glider pilots are "thrill seekers" who recklessly disregard the inherent risks in what they do. You might say that they are under the mistaken impression that hang gliders are fragile, unstable flying contraptions blown about by the winds and only partially, and inadequately under the control of the occupant.

If confronted by this attitude in a spectator, how might you respond? You might say that once upon a time, in the very early days of the sport, it was true that gliders were dangerous, and pilots behaved in an unsafe manner. You might point out that in recent years, however, the quality of the equipment, the quality of training, and the level of maturity of the pilots have all improved immeasurably. You might point to the fine aerodynamic qualities of today's hang gliders, the rigorous certification programs in place for gliders, instructors, and pilots, and you might give examples of the respectable occupations of many hang glider pilots; doctors, lawyers, computer programmers. You might make the claim that hang gliding today is one of the safer forms of aviation, and is no more risky than many other action oriented sports.

Later on, you might laugh about the ignorant attitude of the "woofo". Or, you might wonder "Why is it, after all these years, that the public still doesn't understand? Why can't we educate them about what hang gliding is really like, and how safe and reasonable it really is?"

So now let me ask you another question. What if they're right? What if they're right and we're wrong? And what if I can prove it to you?

Statistics

Let's take a look. First of all, you have to admit that year after year we continue to kill ourselves at a pretty depressing rate. Anybody that's been around this sport for very long has probably lost at least one friend or acquaintance to a fatal hang gliding accident. Most of us who have been around for more than 20 years have lost more than we care to think about. It's true that we have seemingly made some improvement in the overall numbers in the last twenty five years; between 1974 and 1979 we averaged 31 fatalities a year. Since 1982 we've averaged about 10 per year. In the last 6 or 8 years, we may have dropped that to 7 per year. On the other hand, what has happened to the denominator in that equation? In 1978, there were 16 US manufacturers viable enough to send teams to the manufacturer's competition in Telluride. Today we don't even have a manufacturer's competition. My guess is that the fatality rate hasn't changed much, and almost certainly hasn't improved in the last 10 years. I'd guess it's about 1/1000 per year, which is what I guessed it was 10 years ago.

So the question is why? The equipment gets better and more high tech every year, we know more about teaching than ever, we've got parachutes, rockets to deploy them, full face kevlar helmets, wheels, FM radios for emergency rescue. We're all about 20 years older, and commensurately wiser and more conservative. How come we're not safer?

Accident

I've been asking myself variations on this question for as long as I can remember. Three years ago I had an accident, and in thinking about that accident I thought that maybe I had stumbled onto some little insight into the answer. I'll share it with you.

Here's the story (If you don't like reading "there I was" stories, or other people's confessional accident reports, skip this part. I won't be offended). We were out doing some production test flying at Marshall Peak in San Bernardino. For those of you who haven't flown there, Marshall is a rounded knob in the middle of a 2200' tall ridge in the foothills along the northern border of the east end of the Los Angeles basin. It's a very reliable flying site; probably flyable 300 days a year and soarable on most of them. It was July, in the middle of the day, but the conditions were not particularly strong. We were landing on top, which we do whenever conditions are not too rowdy, because it vastly enhances efficiency. I was flying a Spectrum 165, and setting up my approach. I've logged about 100 top landings a year at Marshall for each of the last 15 years. Even so, I know for a fact that at the time, I was not complacent. I know because I have a clear memory of what I was thinking as I set up my approach. In two weeks, I was due to leave on a three week family vacation abroad, and I was thinking "You damn well better not get yourself hurt before your trip or your wife is going to kill you".

At the same time, I wasn't anxious. I was flying a Spectrum, the conditions were only moderate. I'd made lots of successful landings on more difficult gliders in more challenging conditions. I hadn't had an unsuccessful landing attempt in longer than I could remember. I was relaxed, yet focused. My intent was simply to fly a perfect approach. Such intent is always a good idea when top landing at Marshall; the landing is challenging, and a sloppy approach can quickly get you into trouble. I knew exactly where I wanted to be at every point in the approach, position, heading, altitude and airspeed. I executed the approach exactly as I wanted to.

You top land at Marshall half crosswind, gliding up the back side of the hill. You come in hot, because the gradient can be extreme, and there's often some degree of turbulence. The time interval from 40 mph dive, through round out, to flare is very short. I was halfway through this interval, past the point where one is normally rocked by whatever turbulence is present, when both my left wing and the nose dropped suddenly and severely. I went immediately to full opposite roll control, and managed to get the wings and nose just level when the basetube hit. Having turned 90 °, I was traveling mostly downwind, at a groundspeed of probably 30 mph. The right downtube collapsed immediately, and the right side of my face and body hit the ground hard.

Very briefly, I thought I might die. For a slightly longer time, I thought about paralysis. Within a minute, I knew I was mostly ok. In the end, I got away with a slightly sprained ankle, and a moderate case of whiplash. I had three weeks to think about the accident while I bounced around the rutted dirt roads of East Africa trying in vain to keep my head balanced directly over my spine to moderate the pain.

The thing was, I never considered at the time of the landing that I was anywhere near "pushing the envelope". I've done dozens of landings at Marshall where I did feel that way. All during the previous two summers I had been top landing RamAirs at Marshall in the middle of the day in much stronger conditions. I had never had a crash. Thinking about it, I couldn't even remember the last time I had broken a downtube. I tried in vain to think of a clue that I had missed that this was going to be a dangerous landing.

Finally, I was left with only one conclusion. What happened to me was nothing more or less than exactly what the potential result was, during any of the times I had landed under similar, or more challenging circumstances. That was a dangerous landing because of what could have (and did) happen. The corollary, of course, is that all the other landings I had done, on more challenging gliders, in more challenging conditions, were also dangerous (in fact, they were more dangerous). And they were so in spite of the fact that no bad results ensued in any of those landings.

New outlook

And suddenly I felt like I was beginning to understand something that I hadn't previously understood.

You see, here's how I think it works. The overriding determinant of pilot safety in hang gliding is the quality of pilot decision making. Skill level, experience, quality of equipment; all those things are not determinants. What those things do is determine one's upper limits. More skill gives you a higher limit, as does more experience or better equipment. But safety is not a function of how high your limits are, but rather of how well you stay within those limits. And that is determined by one thing; the quality of the decisions you make. And how good do those decisions have to be? Simply put, they have to be just about perfect. Consider the type of decisions you have to make when you fly. Do I fly today? Do I start my launch run at this time, in this cycle? Do I have room to turn back at the hill in this thermal? Can I continue to follow this thermal back as the wind increases and still make it back over the ridge? Each time you face such a decision, there is a level of uncertainty about how the conditions will unfold. If you make the "go" decision when you're 99% sure you can make it, you'll be wrong on average once every 100 decisions. At 99.9%, you'll still be wrong once every 1000 decisions. You probably make 50 important decisions for every hour of airtime, so a thousand decisions comes every 20 hours, or about once or twice a year for the average pilot.

So, to be safe, you have to operate at a more than 99.9% certainty. But in reality, 99.9% is virtually impossible to distinguish from 100%, so really, for all intents and purposes, you have to be 100% sure to be safe.

Going for it

And now I think we can begin to understand the problem. Let's first consider this: we all have a strong incentive to make the "go" decision. The "go" decision means I launch now, relieve my impatience to get into the air and avoid the annoyance of the pilots waiting behind me, instead of waiting for the next cycle because the wind is a little cross and the glider doesn't feel quite balanced. It means I turn back in this thermal, and climb out above launch and stay up, instead of taking the conservative choice and risking sinking below the top and maybe losing it all the way to the LZ. It means I choose to fly today, even though conditions are beyond my previous experience, rather than face listening to the "there I was" stories of my friends in the LZ at the end of the day, knowing that I could have flown but didn't, and knowing that they did and were rewarded with enjoyable soaring flights.

So the incentive is there to choose "go". The only thing we have to counter this incentive is a healthy respect for the possible dangers of failure, and our ability to evaluate our prospects for success. And here's where we get caught by a mathematical trap. Let's say I'm making my decisions at the 99% level, and so are all my friends. Out of every 100 decisions, 99 do not result in any negative consequence. Even if they're bad decisions, nothing bad happens. Since nothing bad happens, I think they're good decisions. And this applies not just to my decisions, but to my friends' decisions as well, which I observe. They must be good decisions, they worked out didn't they? The next natural consequence of this is that I lower my decision threshold a little. Now I'm making decisions at the 98% level, and still, they're working out. The longer this goes on, the more I'm being reinforced for making bad decisions, and the more likely I am to make them.

Eventually, the statistics catch up with me, and my descending threshold collides with the increasing number of opportunities I've created through bad decisions. Something goes wrong: I blow a launch, or a landing, or get blown over the back, or hit the hill on the downwind side of a thermal. If I'm lucky it's a $50 downtube or a $200 leading edge. If I'm unlucky, I'm dead.

Not so wrong image

If we can agree at this point that making 100% decisions is the only safe way to fly, it then becomes interesting to consider, as an aside, what the sport of hang gliding would look like if we all operated this way. Pilots would choose to fly in milder, safer weather conditions. They would operate much more comfortably within their skill and experience limitations. They would choose to fly more docile, more stable, easier to fly gliders. Landings would be gentle, and under control. Hang glider manufacturers would sell two downtubes and one keel for every glider they build (the ones that come on the glider) instead of three or four replacement sets like they do now. There would be far, far fewer accidents (as it is now, there are about 200 per year reported to USHPA). There wouldn't be any fatalities, except maybe for one every couple of years if a pilot happened to die of a heart attack while flying (it's happened once so far that I can remember).

Since this isn't anything like what the sport of hang gliding does look like, we might conclude that hang gliding, as it is presently practiced, is an unreasonably unsafe activity practiced by people who lack a proper and reasonable regard for their personal safety. In other words, we might conclude that the "uninformed public" has been right about hang gliding all along.

Testing

If you don't like that conclusion, I'm pretty sure you're not going to like any of the coming ones either. But let's first ask this question, if we wanted to address this problem of bad decisions being reinforced because they look like good decisions, how would we do it? The answer is, we need to become more critically analytical of all of our flying decisions, both before and after the fact. We need to find a way to identify those bad decisions that didn't result in any bad result. Let's take an example. You're thermalling at your local site on a somewhat windy day. The thermals weaken with altitude, and the wind grows stronger. You need to make sure you can always glide back to the front of the ridge after drifting back with a thermal. You make a decision ahead of time, that you will always get back to the ridge above some minimum altitude above the ridge top, say 800'. You monitor your drift, and the glide angle back to the ridge, and leave the thermal when you think you need to in order to make your goal. If you come back in at 1000' AGL, you made a good decision. If you come back in at 400, you made a bad decision. The bad decision didn't cost you, because you built in a good margin, but it's important that you recognize it as a bad decision. Without having gone through both the before and after analyses of the decision, (setting the 800' limit, observing the 400' result), you would never be aware of the existence of a bad decision, or the need to improve your decision making process.

This was one of the main ideas behind the safe pilot award. The idea wasn't to say that if you never crashed hard enough to need a doctor, you were a safe pilot. The idea was to get pilots thinking about the quality of their decisions. Not just, "Did I get hurt on that flight?", but "Could I have gotten hurt?" During the first couple of years of the safe pilot award program, I got a few calls and letters from pilots who would tell me about an incident they'd had, and ask for my opinion as to whether it should be cause for them to re-start their count of consecutive safe flights. I would give them my opinion, but always point out that in the end it didn't matter, what was important was that they were actively thinking about how dangerous the incident had really been; i.e. what was the actual quality of their decision making.

Looking back on it now, I would say that the criteria for a "safe flight" (any flight which didn't involve an injury indicating the need for treatment by a licensed medical professional) was too lenient. Today I would say it shouldn't count as a safe flight if, for example, you broke a downtube. A few years ago (or maybe it was ten or twelve, when you get to be my age, it's hard to tell), we had a short-lived controversy over "dangerous bars". The idea was that manufacturers were making dangerous control bars, because when smaller pilots with smaller bones crashed, their bones broke before the downtubes did (today, most of the complaints I hear are from the other side, pilots who would rather have stronger downtubes even if their bones break before the downtubes, because they're tired of buying $65 downtubes, which they're doing with some regularity). I have a different suggestion for both of these problems: Why don't we just stop crashing?

Self critic

Of course I know why. The first reason is, we don't even recognize it as "crashing". I continually hear from pilots who say they broke a downtube "on landing" (I even hear from pilots who tell me - with a straight face, I swear - that they broke a keel, or a leading edge "on landing"). The second reason is, we don't think it's possible to fly without breaking downtubes from time to time. I mean after all, sometimes you're coming in to land and the wind switches, or that thermal breaks off, or you're trying to squeak it into that small field, and you just can't help flaring with a wing down, sticking the leading edge, ground looping, slamming the nose (WHAAAAACK!) and breaking a downtube.

We regularly observe our fellow pilots breaking downtubes, which also reinforces our perception that this is "normal". I'm going to go out on a limb here. I'm going to say that if you've broken more than one downtube in the last five years of flying, you're doing something seriously and fundamentally wrong. Either you're flying too hot a glider for your skills, or you're flying in too challenging conditions, or at too difficult a flying site.

Now let's ask one more thing. If hang glider pilots stopped dying, and if hang glider landing areas stopped resounding with the sound of WHAAAAACK every second or third landing (in other words, if hang gliding started looking like fun, instead of looking both terrifying and deadly), do you think maybe the public's perception of the sport might change? (Not do you think more of them would want to do it, in truth, no they probably still wouldn't.) But do you think maybe they'd stop thinking we were crazy for doing it?

Maybe they would.

And maybe they'd be right.

Risk analysis

Reducing your risk – Greg Hamerton (ZA) 2001

Greg Hamerton writes fantasy novels and paragliding articles. He has been flying paragliders since 1992 and has flown over 100 wings. He prefers responsive handling and agility but rates passive stability highly as he enjoys taking photographs and snoozing whilst gliding. Here he analyses the components of risk and how to prevent them to reach the pilot.

"Keep a good margin of safety", the instructor advised. Great. But what does it mean? How can you reduce your risk when leaping off a mountain with a piece of fabric (and maybe some metal too)?

Free-flyers are exposed to a variety of risks, coming from different aspects of the environment. By identifying where the greatest risk for the day lies, you can make an effort to take precautions by increasing your safety margins in each of the other aspects. The idea is to reduce the number of risk elements that can reach the pilot at one time.

To actively manage your risk, find ways to counteract the particular danger, trying to achieve a "green light" state in each segment. The closer the threats have crept in toward the pilot in the centre, the more "red light" warnings are lit, and the more cautious you should be with other elements. When too many elements are impacting the pilot with high risk, the inevitable accident happens, which is a complete failure of risk management. You can usually handle one risk at a time, but when two or three threats compete, things get hectic. By examining each element in turn, I hope to provide some insight into maintaining a good margin of safety.

Weather

No matter your level of experience, sudden bad weather can "take you out". It is the most important risk to manage. The first thing you can do to actively reduce the risk is to watch the weather forecast. It sounds simple, but it gives you an idea of what to expect. The weather forecast predicts a cold front coming through in the morning, with the wind swinging through 180 ° thereafter, and strengthening to 50 km/h. If the day dawns with a light 15 km/h, you already have the warning bells ringing. The more changeable the weather is, the higher the risk is, because the predictions and your own judgement onsite are less accurate. Right, so you're now on the hill. Put up a windsock. If it's ranging from left to right, the wind is variable, which increases the risk of turbulence. If the wind is gusting from 5 km/h to 30 km/h, the risk of turbulence is again higher than a steady 20 km/h. Have a look at the average direction of the wind. The straighter it is, the more penetration problems you have when trying to escape from being blown over the back, thus your risk is higher if the wind is strong and straight. But if the wind is skewed to one side, the risk of turbulence increases, as your risk of being "blown over" reduces. Lastly, the wind strength is vital - the stronger it is, the fewer other risks you can tolerate, because things go wrong really fast.

Wing

Until you have attended a maneuvers clinic and you are familiar with the limits of your current glider, you're flying with a higher glider-risk than you need to, especially if it's a new glider, or you've upgraded to a new class. Try to choose a wing you will be happy on all the time, not only in the smooth conditions. The DHV or AFNOR class is a guideline, but doesn't show how often a wing collapses (paragliders, hopefully not hanggliders). Although manufacturers like to advertise their glider's top speed, useable speed is usually lower, and deteriorates with the presence of turbulence, especially on high-performance models. However, if you get to the slope and it's strong and smooth, look critically at the airborne gliders before pulling up your solid intermediate. The long-and-thin competition wings have the use of all their speed then, and might be flying when you can't. However, on the very turbulent days, your glider risk will still be manageable. Finally, a regular equipment inspection and yearly factory check will help to keep your glider risk in the green.

Site

For a demonstration, imagine all five of your other risk elements "red-lining" for a moment. You have a cold and a hangover, and you have borrowed an aged competition glider for the first time. It only has an old canvas harness. You have no shoes or helmet. You don't know what weather was predicted, but someone mentioned Föhn conditions. The wind is strong, gusty, and crossed on launch. The hair standing up on the back of your neck yet? Good, now look at the new site before you, and all its nasties will jump up at you clearly. Consider yourself flying only half the wing, badly, and being thrown around unpredictably. Rough, rocky terrain increases the risk of turbulence, and limits your emergency landing areas. Small landing fields with critical approaches raise the risk again. If there are no visible wind indicators (lakes, fires, airborne gliders), the site risk is again even higher. When flying cross-country, you are coming upon a new site every five minutes, which is why it requires constant analysis, and lots of caution. A pilot ahead of you flies right up against the slope and seems to be okay. Should you follow? Well, ask yourself how experienced that pilot is. If you have less experience (or don't know), you would be red-lining to be flying as close. Position yourself in the safest part of the air where you can still fly, not in the quickest place to get up. This lowers your risk while you are building the necessary experience and ability.

Gear

Good old body armour. Anything you can put between you and the ground reduces your risk here, and it's as easy as pulling out your credit card. Defend yourself with fullface helmet, boots with ankle support, thick foam in the harness (especially at the base of the spine), knee and elbow pads. You can add an airbag to be doubly sure. You look like more of a dork in a hospital bed than covered in protective gear. Besides, they won't see you for long - you're not going to stand around on takeoff, are you? Reserve parachutes are a very good idea, but they do not reduce your risk just by buying them. You must learn how to use them, and check your system regularly. Accidental deployments are risky moments. Also, 50% of reserve's I've handled during repack clinics have deployment problems, usually due to bonded Velcro strips, awkward harness designs, or incorrect elastics used on the nappies. Packing errors are less common, but it does highlight the need to understand the reserve before it can work for you and not against you. Keeping in touch with others via radio and cellphone means you can benefit from shared knowledge and team rescues. Finally, a GPS is a useful tool for XC flying, giving you a constant update on your speed over the ground, which reduces your risk of being blown over a ridge in wind you didn't recognize.

Ability

Some pilots are naturals, others must learn the hard way. Unfortunately, it is human nature to think we are in the first group until we stuff it up. There's an easy way around this pitfall. Even if you're a reincarnated bird, follow in the footsteps of the hard-learner (you can just do it better ;-). Aerobatics are best begun in a maneuvers clinic, but thereafter you can build your ability by practice, practice, practice - up high. The awareness and sensitivity you build up with your wing is invaluable. A quicker way to enhance your ability is to take your glider to a field or easy site and work on your groundhandling. Professional launching does wonders for risk management. It's all about flying when you want to, not when the gusts decide. When you're up in the air, be critical of your position relative to others. The higher your overall risk profile is, the further away from the ground or compression zones you need to be, just to keep yourself on a par with others. When you're new to the sport, your ability to recognize danger is limited, so you only notice that you're in trouble when things are very bad. This is another reason why you should be out in front of the ridge, ahead of the sports pilots and the skydogs who are going "over the back".

Knowledge

The best is the experience you build from airtime, so if you're not a local at the site you've chosen to fly, know that your risk is high, unless you've got hundreds of flying hours to draw upon. On the blown-out days, seek out whatever theory you can to boost your knowledge. Many good books have been written on flying, the weather, and first aid. There are websites on flying, email forums, and even the war-stories in the flyer's pub contain a grain of useful truth. XC courses, SIV courses and competitions round off the picture. The more involved you become, the more your growing knowledge helps to reduce your risk. Just be aware that you will sometimes overestimate your knowledge - it's a symptom of being human. We always, always "blow it" at some point.

Putting it all together

You've bought a new glider, one class up from the one you're used to. So your wing segment is red-lining (new glider + upgrade). What can you do to reduce your risk? Choose your elements carefully - go to the safest site you can for the day, be less tolerant of risky weather than usual, pretend that you have less ability than you know you have and fly accordingly, seek out as much knowledge as you can about the wing, its DHV rating, and the site you're flying, put some extra gear between you and the ground.

It's all about making sure you have enough other "green lights" on your panel at all times, so you've got that margin of safety.

Harnesses and back protectors

At the 2011 CIVL Plenary, the paragliding harness rule, 12.2.1 in Section 7B of the FAI Sporting Code, was modified as follows:

All pilots in 1st Category events must fly with a harness certified to EN1651, LTF09 or LTF03. The harness must be equipped with a back protector certified to LTF09 or LTF03.

In order to help pilots comply with this important safety rule, a table has been compiled from information sourced from the websites of harness manufacturers and test laboratories. The Paragliding Subcommittee hopes that the PG community will help keep this list updated by informing us of any omission and notifying us of new models and harness/back protector combinations that are certified. This will prove most useful to organisers of future championships as well as to pilots and team leaders preparing to compete in championships.

Updates should be sent to the CIVL Competitions Coordinator.

Last updated: 30 April 2013
Also in spreadsheet format:

Second reserve

Under construction

Paragliding safety

Helmets

The wearing of EN966 certified helmets in Cat 1 events has been mandatory since 1 January 2010. CIVL Officials have compiled a List of helmets currently used in airsports, noting those believed to be certified to EN966.

Harnesses and back protectors

At the 2011 CIVL Plenary, the paragliding harness rule, 12.2.1 in Section 7B of the FAI Sporting Code, was modified. A Table of certified harnesses and back protectors has been compiled from information sourced from the websites of harness manufacturers and test laboratories.

Hang gliding safety

Helmets

The wearing of EN966 certified helmets in Cat 1 events has been mandatory since 1 January 2010. CIVL Officials have compiled a List of helmets currently used in airsports, noting those believed to be certified to EN966.

Sprog setting measurements

An article from Dennis Pagen about Sprog testing and measurement for CIVL Competitions. Plus links to a Series of videos including the Gerolf Heinrichs' lectures, how to check and set your sprogs, and an explanation of the HG prototype ruling among other important safety issues.

Sprog setting measurement procedure

Sprog testing & measurement for CIVL competitions

For several years, the CIVL has been committed to measuring hang glider sprog settings at major competitions. The reason for this policy is to inform pilots of their settings, to ensure a minimum of safety and to gather information useful to the entire flying community.

Sprogs, also known as washout struts, are rods connected to the leading edge of a glider by a swivel and a cable so that they can be lifted upward at their trailing end, but have a limit on how far down they can be moved. They rest underneath the glider sail’s top surface and hold a minimum amount of twist or washout in a wing. They operate in the following manner: If the glider’s angle of attack becomes too low, air moving over the top surface pushes the sail down until it in turn pushes down on the sprogs. The sprogs then put a torque force into the glider’s leading edge to pull the nose of the glider back up, thereby increasing the angle of attack. By this action, sprogs are a powerful part of a hang glider’s pitch stability system.

Sprogs settings are thus important for safety. Sprogs set too high can reduce a glider's roll control because the sail on the wing outside of the curve can hit the sprog and reduce roll response. Sprogs set too low can reduce a glider’s pitch stability, as indicated above. Since sprogs are readily adjustable by the pilot, it is reasonable and important that knowledge of correct settings be available to all pilots and officials. The following information provides the official CIVL measuring procedures (what we use at competitions). With this information in hand, a pilot can control her/his sprog settings so that they are in compliance.

CIVL sprog measuring method

Ideally, a glider should be measured in a protected area (hangar or a large room) on a flat surface protected, although outside with a reasonably level area and wind less than 8km/h (5mph) is acceptable. Many measurements at competitions take place in the landing field or on takeoff. The equipment needed is a digital inclinometer and a telescopic stick. These instruments are available fairly cheaply. A protractor with a weighted string through the apex is also suitably accurate. The following steps explain the procedure.

Step 1: Set the glider up totally (with all battens attached), open the undersurface sprog zippers, and pull the VG chord on full. Note: open the zippers before pulling on the VG to prevent damaging the zippers. Also, if the glider’s VG system has been modified, pull the VG to the original factory maximum setting.

Step 2: Level the glider’s base tube. Use the inclinometer to get the base to level, side-to-side within one degree. You can use pads or other items to prop up one side, if necessary.

Step 3: Level the keel. Prop the rear of the keel up on a suitable support. We use an adjustable telescopic stick, but a ladder or other prop can be used, as long as you can alter the height to get a level keel. If the keel is within a degree or two, you can make the measurements, but will have to add or subtract the difference from the sprog angle measurement (see step 5). If you are only doing one or two gliders it is worthwhile to get the keel exactly level. For CIVL officials measuring many gliders at meets, using digital instruments able to take a setting and give an angle relative to that setting, we typically get the keel within a degree of level and let the instrument do the difference calculation. (If this method is used, the measurements all have to be taken facing the same direction as the keel was measured, or an error will be introduced to the measurement. For some gliders, it is not possible to take measurements all the same way because of sprog access. In this case, the keel must be made exactly level before measuring the sprogs.) Note: the support should be placed as close to the lower rear cables as possible to avoid bending the keel, resulting in false readings. In addition, the true measurement of the keel angle with respect to level is at the nose, just behind the noseplate, which eliminates the effect of keel bending due to tight lower cables and the support.

Step 4: Place each sprog in its normal flying position, then put a hand on the leading edge from underneath to support it, and pull down a bit on the rear of the sprog to “set” it. Next, measure its angle with respect to level. This measurement should be done under the support cable as much as possible to eliminate a false reading due to sprog bending.
Note: It is important to hold the sprog down to full cable stretch while measuring without pulling it down too much and changing the angle. It is easy to push it up as well when measuring. A little bit of practice teaches the right “feel” for when the sprog is setting at its correct working position. Generally, you can hold the inclinometer against the sprog with one hand, while holding the leading edge up with the other so you can feel the solid engagement of the sprog.

Also, be aware that many sprogs made of carbon fibre are tapered or have a rough surface. With a taper, we measure at the very rear of the sprog and hold the inclinometer against the sprog at that point, regardless if it isn’t touching the sprog further forward. With a rough sprog, we measure right below the support cable with an inclinometer long enough (20 cm or 6 inches) to span over enough of the roughness to provide an average reading. Finally, note that on some gliders the zippers are placed so that it is difficult to access the sprog without pushing hard on the sail and thus changing the sprog setting. The best way to handle these situations is to place the inclinometer between the sprog and sail, and gently pull the sprog down so that the support cable is tight, while holding the leading edge up with the other hand.

Step 5: Re-measure the keel angle with respect to level behind the noseplate to get the relative setting, then subtract or add that to the sprog measurements (add it if the keel is nose up from level, subtract it if the keel is nose down from level). Finally, record the settings of both inside and outside sprogs, left and right. These angles are your sprog settings and can be compared to the data collected over the years at competitions, or your manufacturer’s published values.

For more information, watch the Sprog setting measurement videos.

Sprog setting measurement videos

A number of useful videos are available on the FAI Hang Gliding and Paragliding Channel on Youtube to explain this important safety issue. Links are provided below:

• Tomas Pellicci about the future of sprog measuring
• CIVL approach to sprog measuring
• Gerolf Heinrichs about sprogs 1/6
• Gerolf Heinrichs about sprogs 2/6
• Gerolf Heinrichs about sprogs 3/6
• Gerolf Heinrichs about sprogs 4/6
• Gerolf Heinrichs about sprogs 5/6
• Gerolf Heinrichs about sprogs 6/6
• Gerolf Heinrichs about pitch stability in Greifenburg
• Tomas Pellicci & Dennis Pagen about tails
• Dennis Pagen about hang gliding issues in the CIVL 2010 plenary meeting
• John Aldridge about the new hang glider prototype definition

For further information, read the Sprog testing and measurement for FAI hang gliding competitions page.

Safety

2013 update

The new structure was confirmed by the 2013 plenary meeting. The Safety Officer is member of the discipline committees (ex-subcommittees) and can require their expertise for her/his own safety initiatives. In this "safety corner", technical articles are now by disciplines, plus general reflexion articles right down here. Stay tuned...

2012 update

At the 2012 autumn bureau meeting, the structure was changed again. The Safety Subcommittee was replaced by only its chairman, called then Safety Officer. It is a coordinating function for the safety initiatives being undertaken by each of the discipline subcommittees.

New approach to Safety

At the 2011 plenary meeting, it was decided to split the training element out (to be managed by a Training Technical Officer) and create the Safety Subcommittee, with a chairman and members appointed by the discipline (HG, PG, Aerobatics and Accuracy) subcommittees to work on their specific issues.

Projects under development

• Setting up an online repository for safety and training information, including,
      for example, video seminars and demonstrations. This is already underway
      for hang gliding (see links).
• Maintaining the incident database - with data being collected from both Cat 1
      and Cat 2 events. Special expertise will be required for meaningful
      investigation and statistical analysis.

Contact the Safety Officer

Survive experience

How to survive gliding? – Bert Willing (CH) 2008

Bert Willing has spent some 2,200 h over 28 years in three dozen different gliders, and run about 70,000 km cross-country, mainly in the Alps. He earned an German instructor’s licence 20 years ago, and since two years also teaches in his local Swiss club. He regularly trains aerobatics - without much ambition, he just loves rolls. Here he seeks why experienced pilots also have accidents.

Motivation

In 1996, Southern France claimed a death toll of 18 amongst glider pilots - three of them dying at my airfield, when the training two-seater inadvertently spun into a single seater below it. At that point, I stopped gliding for a year in order to think about my own ranking on the list. Eventually I came to the conclusion (midairs set apart) that it solely depends on me if I want to wreck a glider. I then decided to keep on gliding and bought my first glider (well, a share in a glider).

Ten years and 1,300 h later I can’t help to state that the number of accidents is certainly varying from year to year, but on average it always stays the same. Why is this? Is there anything we can do about it? Do I have a chance to escape from the statistics on the long run?

For me, gliding means to get to know new landscapes, to widen my experience. I’m constantly reaching my limits, and if I want to learn something new, I have to push these limits - on each flight, I somewhere have to cross the limit at least a little bit: the next mountain pass, the next mountain range, or the known ranges a little lower and a bit faster. I need to get beyond the limits in my head, but I mustn’t cross the limits of aviation!

I certainly have no easy solution to present how to avoid all those dead fellow pilots. I actually think that there is no easy solution at all - but may be it does help to speak out my thoughts.

Each time there is an accumulation of lethal accidents (which is about every summer) the pressure from third parties increases. Local or even national newspapers report, they point to the number of accidents (or impacts in residential areas), and subsequently politicians and the like feel the pressure “to do something”. Which will come along as “preliminary” rules and restrictions with the remark that we’ll have to wait for the accident investigation to conclude on causes.

Reading the investigation reports of the last years, one finds thorough explanations how the accident happened and why it was impossible to survive the impact. So, what do I learn from this? When a glider runs along with 110 kph below a ridge and sticks its wingtip slightly into a rock, I don’t need much of an imagination that the pilot doesn’t stand any chance. If a pilot turns into final for an outlanding, stalling his glider less than 100 m above ground - how would he possibly survive?

The investigation report will tell me very precisely, how the accident did happen - but not much else. It probably will tell me something about the poor pilot’s overall experience, and his level of training. But honestly, I shouldn’t expect much more even from the most conclusive report. But what I want to know is: Why did this accident happen? It’s not like most of the accidents happen to low-hours pilots and youngsters. On the contrary, most often the victims are pilots with thousands of hours and accomplishments I dearly would like to get to.

Why a Klaus Holighaus didn’t return from the mountains?
Why was a Hans Glöckl been had?
Why did a Wolfgang Lengauer crash into the ridge?
Why is Frederico Blatter gone?
Why does an experienced pilot spin into the ground during an outlanding?
How can I avoid to follow them?

If it hits so many experienced pilots, and if I’m piling up more and more experience - how not to be killed by my experience?!

Accidents

Aviation is built on redundancy so that a single error doesn’t turn into disaster. If a mechanical link to the aileron has failed, the daily check will make it evident and the glider is grounded - but if we skip that daily check, we make an error on top of the defect, and that gives way to an accident.

Avoiding accidents therefore means breaking the chain of errors. Obviously, we also could try not to make errors in the first place - but I personally haven’t yet met the pilot who doesn’t make errors. Now, what are these errors? “Error” is probably not the right word, “accident factor” seems more appropriate to me. Accident factors can be classified into several groups:

1. Technical Defaults
   Here we find structural failures, or problems like failure of instrumentation due to clogged pressure ports.
2. Piloting Errors
   These are badly executed manoeuvres, as erroneous planning of the pattern circuit, stalling on final etc.
3. Stress Overload
   We can be overloaded by ending up in a messy situation (struggling to stay aloft over unlandable terrain, low-level rope break on aerotow), or simply by the fact that our personal performance has detoriated by lack of oxygen, dehydration, tiredness or an urgent need to pee. But a pilot is also overloaded if he has to identify another glider heading for collision with more than 300 kph relative, when the background contrast is high.
4. Erroneous Situational Judgement
   Here, things are getting a little bit fuzzy... To judge a situation, we have to take into account the weather, the terrain, our flight experience, our actual level of training, our daily psychological state - everything.

Error chains are typically made of accident factors from more than one of these groups. Initially, we are happily cruising and don’t worry too much about outlanding sites - things look rather ok. Then the situation becomes a little stressy because that next thermal just doesn’t want to show up, and the situation with fields is not exactly what we thought it was. Workload gets high and higher and we finally don’t even recognise the piloting error on turning into final - until impact.

About twenty years ago I had a near-miss after which I started to think intensively about my behaviour in a cockpit: After releasing from a winch launch on a day without thermals, I was doing 60 ° bank turns in a glider of 26 m wingspan. Somewhere around 250 m AGL the nose gently started dropping, and the glider just wouldn’t react anymore. The standard procedure to stop a spin showed no result (the rudder was sucked into the direction of the spin, and I was pushing the pedal towards a force-limit, instead of pushing it to the mechanical stop). After a short review of the situation (including a hopeless glimpse at the canopy jettison handle), I pushed the rudder out of the shoulder to the stop, jerked the flap lever to negative and started to pull up as soon as my bum signalled seat pressure. By this time I had done one and a half spin revolutions, and the pull-up was well beyond any limit for Vne or max G-load, just to stay clear of the tree tops.

Looking back, I had worked myself through every possible part of the error chain:

• It was the time of my diploma exams and I had a fairly poor level of training - but
      I wasn’t aware that my performance was badly affected by that.
• I didn’t thought about the fact that stalling during a high-bank turn might turn
      even a docile ship into a beast, and that an open class ship with its huge
      angular momentum  takes some more time to stop a spin.
• I didn’t fancy that the altitude after a winch launch only offers a quite limited
      reserve AGL for a spin experience.
• I finally did a very common piloting error by stalling the ship.

The only reason why I had succeeded to break the error chain was that over the past, I had developed the habit to train spins (at high altitude) with almost any glider I ever flew. But the fact that I did make it in the end was basically luck (obviously, I didn’t have any plan B). That day I decided that my survival mustn’t merely rely on a little luck.

In order to break the error chain, we have to think about how to avoid or neutralize the "accident factors“ of any of the above groups.

Technical defaults and piloting errors are "hard factors“; they can be assessed objectively. Since soaring has been around since quite a couple of decades, one can say that these factors can be relatively well kept at bay through official rules and legislation (training syllabus, airworthiness requirements etc.).

Stress overload and erroneous judgements are "soft“ accident factors - it depends on the very pilot which stress load he will stand, or why he misjudges a critical situation. And as it depends on the pilot, there can be no strict rules to hide behind: Every pilots needs to know his own limits, and he can’t discharge responsibility!

I am convinced that the starting points of most accidents are soft factors. The error chain then adds a hard factor or two (stalling on turn to final) to make the perfect crash. And as these soft factors can’t be fought by general rules and legislation, they are difficult to grasp - and in the world of soaring, there is no tradition to discuss them in a structured manner. Professional aviation is light-years ahead of us in this point. Of course - professional aviation deals with other levels of workload and responsibility... Well, does it? In terms of responsibility, certainly so. There are not 300 pax in my Ventus choosing between chicken and pasta while trusting the pilot.

On the workload level, I’m not quite that sure. On an eight-hours cross-country flight through the Alps, I have to make strategic and tactical decisions by the minute, I have to fly the glider precisely (i.e. low on a ridge), I have to deal with lots of radiation from the sun and have to worry about getting enough oxygen to breathe. There is no autopilot or copilot I could count on. I’m convinced that high-performance flights in gliders put a huge workload on the pilot, and that those soft factors are being systematically underestimated and pushed away. It’s about time to grow up a little in this aspect.

Stress overload

A stress overload always happens when our performance doesn’t match a given task. That may be the case because a task is very or even too difficult, or because our performance has decreased for various reasons. In any case, it is a "soft“ factor as it strongly depends on the situation and on the pilot’s personality.

What can we do about this? We have three choices:

• We can make sure that our performance doesn’t decrease.
• We can make use of "pre-defined“ solutions.
• We can avoid situations which might push us beyond our limits.

Obviously, the best would be a combination of all three.

Performance can already be maintained by technical means: The human eye is not at all trained to identify an aircraft bound for collision. That aircraft doesn’t move relative to our field of view - but genetically, we are hunters and our image processing is optimized for movement detection. The identification of a still object 30 ° off our nose is just not part of our “specification sheet”. We can help our mark-1 eyeballs by using an anti-collision system as FLARM, by giving our glider’s appearance a little contrast, and by supplying the brain with enough oxygen for image processing. As aerobatic pilots know well, image processing is the first thing shut down by the brain if there is a lack of oxygen.

Another tool which helped to reduce my personal workload enormously, is the GPS in alpine soaring. Without a GPS, going to a new mountain range gives a lot of work with map and rule in order to decide which outlanding field is within reach, and when I can’t jump into the next cone anymore. If one gets low, one also needs to find lift on those unknown ridges, and if the ridges don’t work, the workload gets real high. Since my GPS offers me the bearing and distance to the next field with a simple glance, my beats-per-minute have significantly decreased in such situations. Obviously, the maps and the rule are still in my side pocket, but most of the time I can just concentrate on the lift. And instead of having my nose in the map for long moments, I even can watch out for other gliders.

A helpful tool can also be a stall warning (i.e. the side string on the canopy). If a pilot spins in during the final turn for an outlanding, his normal input channels to detect a stalled attitude must have been clogged - which is also a form of overload.

And of course we have to pay attention to the biological base of our performance: If we fly for hours and hours, we have to eat, drink and pee - just as we do on the ground. If we sit for hours in the sun or the cold, we have to be protected. And flying in the mountains, we have to be aware how oxygen depletion affects our performance.

All these factors do tire us gradually, and we have to have a plan to fight them back. If I’m hungry, my blood sugar level is already too low, and when I’m thirsty, I am already dehydrated. And when I get the feeling that the air is getting thinner, the canula should have been up my nose since quite some time. Well, and everybody knows that bladder pressure is highest when we happen to be low down on the ridge...

All these factors play a role whether I will reach my limits during a hairy situation on this flight. And for this situation I should have made sure that I have the best prerequisites - a little less might just be the difference between a deep sigh, or dangling on a winch rope underneath a helicopter.

An important tool to escape from a difficult situation is the mental preparation - like considering a break of the tow rope while preparing for launch. Calling out "safety altitude“ during aerotow means that I know exactly what to do in case the tug lets me down, and that I just execute a pre-drilled manoeuvre. A good example is Valentin Mäder’s classification of a situation during cross country into the categories Green, Orange and Red. As long as the situation is “green”, average speed is all which matters. As soon as the situation becomes “orange”, the focus is on staying airborne, and during “red” the only task is a safe outlanding. By consequently "declaring the situation“, any doubts are dismissed and the actions are well defined - deviation from the track, accepting weak lift, dumping the water etc.

Stress-lock

Sometimes a sharp decrease in performance may happen exactly when we need it the least: One locks up under stress - a little like the rabbit which get hypnotized by the snake. There is a fair number of investigations into this subject (mostly from the defence industry), and the findings can be wrapped up as follows: When we suddenly identify a situation as being life-threatening, our body sets free a massive dose of adrenaline. If this dose is too high, our basic motoric functions are pushed to their max (to make us escape that evil lion hunting for us), but our fine motorics and our perception are drastically reduced - with tunnel sight and selective hearing, we loose the best part of our connection to the world around us. There is just no way anymore to judge the situation correctly and to act accordingly. Once such a reaction has taken place, there is absolutely no way to control it, and when this happens in a cockpit, the outcome is dramatic: the glider stalls on turning into final, everything spins around and we try until impact to pull up the nose.

Is there anything we can do about this? Well, the simplest and best solution would be to avoid this type of situation - some words on this below.

The only alternative is to make sure that there are no massive doses of adrenaline. Some situations can’t or shouldn’t be trained, and it is important to go through a mental preparation with pre-defined actions schemes. If during a flight we see than the situation glitches towards drama, we then can take out the pre-defined action of the mental drawer and execute it even under stress.

However, there are critical situations which can be trained and drilled very conveniently - if one only wants to. Spins are a very good example: A pilot who has seen just half or one rotation during his initial training will be heavily disoriented when ten years later the sky turns green and keeps spinning around. It’s no big deal to do a little spin training at a safe altitude once or twice a year, together with an instructor if necessary. It will not be any guarantee that we never will spin a glider unintentionally - but if we do, stall, departure and even a stationary spin will be something we are used to, and our body will probably not push a dose of adrenaline into our veins which shuts off the better parts of our brains. Sometimes it just needs a second or two for the right reaction, and life goes on!

My near-miss described earlier is a good example: Having done spin training on various gliders over years did save my life, because the animal part of my brain didn’t take the strange attitude of the glider as life-threatening, thus giving me the chance to think. Tow rope breaks around safety altitude on aerotow are another example - having done most of my launches on a winch, a low rope break on aerotow used to be a nightmare for me. Now that I fly as an instructor in a club which exclusively aerotows, I have to fly these exercises on a regular basis (and have to prepare them mentally) - they are actually an excellent example for pre-defined action schemes.

Each pilot has his own personal limits, and we just have to understand that often these limits are much closer than we would like to think. How do we avoid situations, which push us beyond our limits? The first and most important step is to judge the situation and its potential development correctly. I am absolutely convinced that most heavy accident originate at this point.

Erroneous situational judgement

Correct judgement of a situation requires knowing one’s own limits - or even accepting the existence of personal limits in the first place, even though our “top gun image” might take a blow. It is important to be aware that these limits shift from day to day, and even throughout a single flight: Working the ridge after takeoff is a different story than ten hours later, when we scratch together the last couple of meters to finally make it home. If at the beginning of the season I spiral in a thermal just below and in front of the ridge, I might spend a thought or two on the fact that I just finished hibernation and I don’t exactly have the same level of training as I had last autumn after logging 150 hours during the season.

There are no rules or legislations to help us on that - we have to judge by ourselves. Lying to oneself means having one leg in the tomb. During spiralling underneath a ridge I personally put myself upon each turn the question whether I think survival of the next turn is a realistic scenario - and on quite a couple of occasions, the answer is “no”.

But even knowing the own limits one can perfectly have a judgement of a situation which is plain wrong. On a competition flight, I once went up the eastern side of the Durance valley from St Crépin to the turnpoint Briançon and back - with the north-westerly wind on that day a piece of cake to run low and fast. Unfortunately, the wind happened to be just strong enough so that this part of the valley was in the lee of the high Ecrins massif, and when I finally made back to St Crépin uncomfortably low, my neck had grown by a couple of inches.

In order to judge a situation correctly, it takes experience, and experience is actually the sum of all wrong judgements. Unfortunately, glider pilots can’t really escape this mechanism - and it is also just part of the game to sometimes sit for hours in a field swearing and trying to figure out, how one ended up here.

The lesson simply is that I have to accept that my judgement may be wrong. The basic rule is "Always have an alternate".

If the thermals don’t do what they are supposed to do, my “alternate” is a field within reach. But I have to know this field and be able to recall it before I get into the situation to need it! If my judgement is that the ridge will work, and I look for something landable only once the ridge has had its laugh at me, I’ll be under stress - and I only can react instead of act. I need at least one answer for every potential development of a situation.

If I’m running the ridge low above the trees, or if I thermal just above the ridge line (I have to have my escape route at any point of time) that can be the lee side of the ridge, or just my excess speed. If I haven’t thought about escape and hit the downdraft of the thermal close to the trees - well, then there will be just no escape. It’s just like crossing a mountain pass - you always approach under an angle and have the speed to abort.

The principle is always the same - I have to plan for the possibility and the ways a situation might degrade, and I have to be at least one step ahead of this degradation. If I don’t pay attention to this principle, I’ll be limping behind, and eventually I won’t be limping fast enough. Always be ahead of your aircraft.

Sometimes there is a "gutt feeling“ that something is wrong with the situation. There is no real grasp on this, every single point looks ok, but it just feels not ok. As a trained physicist, I used to discard gutt feeling and called them Voodoo - there is little place for esotherics in the world of physics. However, I have come to learn to listen to gutt feeling, and even to take it seriously. There have been days with good weather, a glider waiting for me and the whole day at my disposal. But something didn’t feel right and I told myself: Just forget it, go do something else. And I did. I still don’t know whether I should have been flying on these days, but then even I don’t need to know this - there will be enough other days to go flying.

Error recognition

Stupid men always commit the same errors - intelligent men always invent new errors. Every pilot commits errors - we are humans, not machines. If we want to break the error chain, we have to organize or flying in a way that one single error won’t lead to an accident. The planning for alternates is an important tool for this.

But if we want to evolve, probably the most important means is to recognize the errors we have made, and to eventually learn from them. That means being honest to oneself in the first place, and to be open for critics. If during a flight things didn’t work out as expected, flying low did turn into flying real low, acceptable fields are nowhere to be seen and the adrenaline level rises... and puh, there is the lift and operations switch to “normal” again. Then it is absolutely important not to push away the event, but to mentally go through that situation again (maybe once we are back home) and to analyze how we did end up with cold sweat on our face. Of course it would be much more appealing to tell the buddies over a beer how close that call was and how our exceptional flying skills finally made it work out. But that means pushing away and lying to ourselves. It is much more worth to admit that that event was no good, and that would be better off avoiding it the next time. Stupid men always commit the same errors...

The recognition of errors also requires to listen to critics from the outside. An experienced pilot, an instructor and sometimes even a student pilot looks at our behaviour from the outside, and when he thinks he sees something strange - well, we should be listening first and then think about it before snapping "Shut up, bimbo“. Maybe he ain’t no bimbo.

Collective treatment of errors

People say that there are ten near-misses for every fatal accident. Those who had the fatal accidents are no more there to tell us which error chains finally killed them. The investigation report certainly will tell us that spinning in nearly vertically unfortunately didn’t leave a chance for survival. But why did this pilot with a couple of thousand hours under his belt stall his glider? What let him to commit a piloting error and to not even be aware of it? He won’t tell us - he’s bloody dead.

But for him, there have been ten near-misses where the accident has been avoided by breaking the error chain. These pilots can explain us how the error chain was built up, and how they eventually managed to break it. We all could learn a lot from this experience if those pilots would be ready (and be allowed) to talk about it frankly and honestly! Near-misses are a huge pool of experience, and we are actually in no position to discard it. However, it is important that pilots can easily and without any disciplinary consequences talk about their critical situations - the internet provides us a fantastic tool for this.

Constructive dealing with errors is a crucial point which absolutely needs to be incorporated into the culture of gliding. According to our traditions, errors are to be punished and will have "consequences“. Piloting errors should of course have the consequence of some more training, and there is very little place in aviation for any lack of discipline.

But there are lot of occasions to commit errors on the basis of “best knowledge and conscience”. If we get away with it and are aware of having been stupid, then we could at least try and have our buddies profit from that experience as well.

This will only work if the soaring community promotes an open discussion about these errors. Maybe our image of being cool pilots will take a little blow - but honestly, the photo of a pathetic heap of scrubbed plastic is certainly not something which conveys an image of coolness, either.

Many thanks to Valentin Mäder for his thought and the discussions with him!