1. Powered Sailplane Airstarts
Safety 1

Powered Sailplane Airstarts

Threat and Error Management By Pat Barfield Picture this: You are in a powered sailplane, and you have pushed far from home ahead of an approaching front. Shadows intrude over your homeward route. You get lower, and you feel okay about your engine behind your seat. “Let’s keep…
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LOOKING BACK - BUILDING FORWARD

In my seagoing career I often worked in inherently hazardous conditions, with others imbued with a strong team ethos. We looked after each other’s backs. There was a fundamental excitement in the work we did, constantly changing environments and demands. We did cool stuff,…
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Safety and Club Sustainability - Insights from Safer Skies Brisbane

Mariela Pocklington giving her presentation. By Drew McKinnieSafety Manager On the weekend of 18 – 19 April, GAus, CASA, Industry and Queensland Gliding members, plus several interstate members, gathered for the ‘Safer Skies, Stronger Clubs’ Event in Brisbane.This was a most…
Landing

The Hidden Trap of Late Landing Configuration

Lessons from Low-Level Sailplane Accidents By Christopher Thorpe Landing is universally recognised as one of the most demanding phases of any flight. In sailplane operations, this workload intensifies dramatically due to the absence of power, requiring continuous energy…
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CONTINGENCY PLANNING VISUALISATION & SAFETY

Drew McKinnieSafety Managersafety@glidingaustralia.org Have you ever been airborne, knowing you should not be up there, wishing you were on the ground, knowing you have blundered into real danger? My predecessor Professor Sidney Dekker is a wise and insightful man, a compelling…
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LIVING IN INTERESTING TIMES

Drew McKinnieSafety Managersafety@glidingaustralia.org CHANGING THE FLIGHT PLANHave you ever planned a flight, set off, found unfavourable conditions and setbacks, and wondered whether to press on, or to modify the plan, or to come back and try again on another day? Sometimes we…

GLIDING OPERATIONS DECONFLICTION

We have obligations to manage foreseeable risks, so far as is reasonably practicable. While our gliding operational practices in uncontrolled airspace and non-controlled aerodromes may be well understood within clubs, these need to be discoverable by other aviators, managed in…
Field Selection

Beyond the Badge

Decision-Making and Risk By Christopher ThorpeOn 5 June 2024, an experienced British pilot flying a Mini Nimbus C set out to complete a five-hour duration flight – one of the final steps toward earning his Silver badge. The flight ended in tragedy. After overflying several…
Safety

Safety Insights - Digging Into Safety Issues

We can, and must, do better in gliding safety – particularly our attitudes to gliding safety. Let’s dig into this issue. Drew McKinnieSafety Managersafety@glidingaustralia.org Let me call a spade a shovel. We can, and must, do better in gliding safety – particularly our…
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SAFETY SNIPPETS – PRIORITIES

Drew McKinnieSafety Managersafety@glidingaustralia.org Engagement and Dialogue Thank you to all members who have supported our Skyward Summit Safety Seminars in Brisbane, Perth, Murray Bridge and Camden, plus a mini-seminar at Lake Keepit. I look forward to a Victorian event in…

SAFETY, EXPECTATIONS, PLANS AND BIASES

You’re a good pilotAn okay pilot at least. You’ve got a few years gliding experience now, with your logbook filling quickly with fun memorable flights, lots of flying hours total experience. Early days of cautious apprehension are behind you, yet you keep an eye out for risks…

National Safety Conversations

'Incredible. It’s even worse than I thought it would be. ' Marvin the Paranoid Android, from The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams.The comedic appeal of Marvin lies in his sense of deadpan pessimistic irony – and the fact that robots are not supposed to have…
SMS Navigatiion Summary

Navigating Through the Safety Management System

Drew McKinnieSafety Managersafety@glidingaustralia.org 1.We all want safe operations and airworthy gliders and systems 2.We rely upon many other people in diverse rolesto make that happen. 3.We want to enjoy our sport with minimum overheads and administration at club level. 4.We…

Gliding Australia Safety Policy Updated

Drew McKinnieGliding is a wonderful sport. It’s not risk free, has high rewards, wonderful friendships and experiences – when all goes well. Every day we indulge in our sport, we strive to combine our collective efforts to ensure safe, fun and exhilarating flying.No-one sets out…
Soar

I want my spirit to soar

I want my spirit to soar,Yet I can’t find the words;Instead of finding lift in my thoughts,There’s sink and flightless birds. I’d like to fly along cloud streetsWith my vario pegged up high;Not flat tyres or tubing breaksOr batteries that die. I’d take a launch in a buoyant…
Electric Towing 1

Electric Towing

By Leigh Snell In this article I’ll describe my experiences of using my electric vehicle to tow my glider, to help answer the question of whether or not an EV makes a practical gliding tow car. The simple answer is yes, but… I have a Tesla Model 3 Long Range with a tow bar rated…
Ear

Distance, Speed and Acceleration or why you need a Variometer

By Leo DaviesReprinted with the kind permission of Keep Soaring, LKSC When we fly, we like to go fast. Pilots often brag about their speed, as in, “I averaged 340 km/hour on my last leg”. Strange then, that once we close our eyes, we have no way of telling how fast we are going.…
Keepit regatta

Safety - Just culture 1.0.

There is a link between people’s commitment to report safety-critical events or near misses on the one hand, and how an organization (CASA, the GFA, your club) handles the aftermath of those events on the other. If responses are perceived to be punitive, or retributive, this…
Flarm

Flarm-azing

Did you know that every registered aircraft in the world is assigned an ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization) 24bit binary code that is linked to the aircraft registration? by David Jansen When a glider is registered, CASA send the Certificate of Registration holder a…
ClassE

Transponders, Class E and the missing safety case

The recent proposal by Airservices Australia to lower the limit for Class E airspace between Cairns and Melbourne has created quite a bit of turbulence in the country’s aviation community. Pure gliders are, purportedly, exempt from the resulting transponder requirement but tugs,…
Hahnweide

GLIDING TEM Part 3 - COMPETITION SOARING and other specialist flights

In the last two articles, I introduced Threat and Error Management (TEM) as a simple yet powerful technique for assessing threats affecting any and every glider flight, and discussed how to use TEM in local and cross-country glider flights. Recognising threats allows pilots to…
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Safety - Blue on blue

When you’ve been involved in an activity like gliding for a long time, certain incidents seem to form a pattern – they happen over and over. Wheels-up landings are frequent, stall-and-spin accident less so. Each individual incident by itself is, however devastating and uniquely…
TEM intro 2

Safety – Threat and Error Management Part 2

In the last issue, I introduced Threat and Error Management (TEM) as a simple yet powerful technique for assessing threats affecting any and every glider flight. Recognising threats allows pilots to predict situations where they might make errors or forget something, which…
safety

Safety Differently

Safety Differently By Professor Sidney DekkerNational Safety Advisor An insight hit home when I was working with a health authority in Canada a couple of years ago. The insight was this: when we talk about safety, we actually don’t talk about safety. We talk about the lack of…
safety graph

How to Get Back Into the Sky Safely

How to Get Back Into the Sky Safely For Locked-down rusty glider pilots Percentage of total gliding accidents against pilot currencyx-axis (horizontal): number of launches in last 3 monthsy-axis (vertical): percentage of total number of gliding accidents over 15 years(Source:…