Hello and a Happy new Year to you all,
I was wondering how to start the year from a safety perspective and thought I might go back to basics. The role of Safety Officer is to increase safety to reduce the number of incidents and accidents. The big question is how to do this. There is no point in incident reporting if we don't learn from it, therefore we need as many incidents to be reported as possible and we need to publish the lessons learned. Anything that causes or could have caused injury is considered reportable. Last year the Club had 14 reported incidents, of which only 2 were minor in nature. These were one report from me where part of my harness broke in the air and another from Chris Williams on a tandem landing that resulted in no injury. The main point here is that it seems highly unlikely that the only 2 instances happened to the current Safety Officer and the ex-Safety Officer. If we are to learn from incidents we need to hear about them. To that end I ask each and every one of you to write to me at safety@tvhgc.co.uk (DO NOT REPLY TO THIS E-MAIL) and tell me about the most interesting thing that happened to you last year. I want to hear about any time when you thought you were "lucky to get away with it", weren't comfortable about a situation you found yourself in, reduced your safety margins or had to "use your superior flying skills" to sort a situation out. In line with my idealised "Just Culture" in flight safety I will not judge you, and I will ensure that we can all learn from the experiences of others. I'm just kicking off a blog at www.justcultureparagliding.wordpress.com which I would like to become a hub for sharing such discussions. Feel free to use the contact page there to share your experiences too. I will be giving out a prize, either at the Big Fat Repack or at the next AGM, for the shared experience that I feel most contributes to Flight Safety. I look forward to hearing from you.
Getting back to the reason for doing all of this at the individual pilot level, if we can make each person question what they're doing and ask whether their actions are compromising safety then we can start to put barriers in place to prevent accidents and we start to make a difference. The CAA and the professional civil aviation sector have been keen on this for ages and call it TEM or Threat and Error Management https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threat_and_error_management. I'm sure some of you will like to have a good read and I would love to hear how you think it might apply to us in paragliding.
Another hot topic at the moment is Airproxes and collision avoidance hardware. Class G airspace is a "See and be seen" environment but there are devices such as TCAS, FLARM and AirWhere that can assist pilots in locating other aircraft. There has been A LOT of chat on social media recently about these topics so I thought I'd share a little of my experiences of flying with TCAS, a radar service and FLARM at various times. TCAS, used by all military and many civilian aircraft would be considered the gold standard solution but is not available to us or sailplanes primarily due to electrical power drain. Pilots operating with TCAS do not rely solely upon it, but, if cruising at 5000 ft under a radar service, with TCAS, may have a reduced lookout compared to a pilot of a military jet at low level. A radar service will pick up almost any aircraft except a paraglider (I've even had parachutists called as a radar contact) so pilots might expect some form of call before coming close to another aircraft. If you see a twin engine aircraft heading towards you while at 5000 ft I would suggest you make some avoidance manoeuvre as there is a reduced chance the pilot will see you.
FLARM is a GPS-based avoidance system that relies on interaction with co-operating parties. This means that if you've not got a FLARM unit other FLARM users can't see you. FLARM has become the 'industry standard' for sailplanes. Beginning in the Alps over 10 years ago FLARM became mandatory for sailplanes and this spread to motor gliders and tug aircraft. Its use has since spread to other light aircraft and to light military aircraft. They work well, are unobtrusive and the readout is easy to understand and interpret. Airwhere is a similar system that relies on co-operating units (and a ground station I think).
I must stress that these do not absolve anyone of the responsibility to look out and no piece of gadgetry will keep you totally safe. Also, there's no use in saying that you had the right of way as you bounce off the leading edge of a Typhoon wing. Think about what you might do in certain circumstances and maintain your own good lookout.
One last thing, we also had 2 PG vs PG collisions last year, both of which ended well fortunately. I am concerned about the recent spate of people live streaming Facebook while flying on the ridge. I know that many of us fly with stills cameras or with GoPros but I feel that sending Facebook livestream updates is rather more interactive and therefore distracting.
To summarise, please can we all try and make this year as incident free as possible, respect each other's choice to publically air any issues that they may have and act as responsible and professional aviators. Simples.
Kind regards,
Nick Smith
Safety officer TVHGC
safety@tvhgc.co.uk
07866 803592
