2022 Wilotree Park Nationals -Daniel Velez Bravo's analysis

[LeadingEdge]

2022 Wilotree Park Nationals5 days ago
Daniel Velez Bravo's analysis
(Wilotree Park, Groveland, FL, USA)
https://danielvelezbravo.wordpress.com/

Translated into English:

https://danielvelezbravo-wordpress-com. ... r_pto=wapp

Until the start of the championship and until the night I was sanctioned, we were aware that flying in a cloud consisted of completely disappearing inside a cloud, from the view of another pilot who was just below. Strictly speaking, it is what pilots call “white out” and it is that everything turns white in all directions, so there is no relationship with the ground or the sky. Under this criteria, I take it very seriously when I am in championships, to never fly in the clouds, and always make sure I am below or next to them, obviously getting as close as possible to gain the greatest advantage without losing sight of the ground or of the horizon. On day 3, 8 minutes before the start, I got much closer than expected to the base in a strong ascent and I had to retreat 800 meters to the side of the cloud, to make sure you don't get caught inside it. And just before the start, where I took the highest altitude and the best position, I was flying with the wall of a cloud to my west, but with more than 180° of open sky, down, up and east completely open and clear.

However, that night of the sanction, reviewing the rules of section 7 that regulates international sports aviation, we found an addendum of May 1, 2022 (that is, it began to be applied one day before the start of the championship) that it had a single strange mention that "climbing on the side of the cloud is illegal", and that mention was tied to the fact that this might not be considered an argument to be higher than the other pilots.

With this mention then, the evaluation committee reviews my situation and analyzes if I broke the rule by climbing higher than the base of the cloud, as I accepted in my interview, and they conclude that indeed, under the criteria of the FAI standard of the May 1, 2022, I did something wrong.

Now then the other part of the story appears: What is the sanction for this type of fault.

It turns out that the local regulations of the event did not have anything written about flying in clouds, so as Davis Straub noted, this gap must be filled with what section 7 says about it .

So, since I was indeed accused of flying in clouds, and I accepted that I used the side of the cloud to justify my additional height but that statement was not received, the director applied the sanction of flying in cloud, but unbelievably, and despite the fact that Davis Straub warned him, the sanction they applied of 20% of the points, which was not in the local regulations, nor was it supported by the international regulations, exceeded by 190 points the sanction for the first offense of flying in clouds, which is, as we copied above, only 10 points!

You don't have to be an expert then to see that my difference of 55 points with the first official place in the championship is nothing more than an improperly applied sanction, from a director who doesn't listen to reason or bother to sit down and talk with me, and that I was probably influenced by those who filed the cloud flight complaint(s) against me.

In summary: They applied a sanction 20 times more serious than the sanction defined for flying in clouds, and they did it without mentioning who reported me, nor being able to review or refute their reports, and despite the fact that the technical report with which they sanctioned me I was completely out of context. It was enough to have taken the time to review the animation in Ayvri, and see that I was not "thermalizing" inside the clouds as usually happens when there is really malicious flight in clouds (you see the pilot who continues to thermal in the same ascent as the others. And even if after that they wanted to insist on sanctioning me to make sure I stayed not just out of the clouds, but out of them.

Great conversation on rules and their application. Very little discussion on what the pilot could have done differently to not appear to other pilots to be cloud flying.

[CloudHopper]

I look forward to the future when the 3D tracklogs can be overlayed by the day's cloud history. Proximity to cloud violations could then be recorded and the appropriate penalty points automatically assigned by a pre-approved algorithm.

Drones, glider-mounted cameras, and satellites can be used to capture the daily clouds' data.

[DHMead]

The way that Daniel explains his situation leads one to believe that FAA cloud clearance requirements are simply ignored by some contestants.

Do the content rules even mention the FAR's?

Is no one concerned about the possibility of FAA enforcement action against our sport?

Florida is not exactly void of general aviation airplanes, gliders, student pilots, and high speed aircraft on instrument flight plans who actually are allowed to fly through clouds (not to mention the occasional moron who just like to plow through clouds in whatever they have).

It will take exactly one mid air collision between a hang glider and pretty much any other "licensed" aircraft to have the FAA's boot on our necks in a heartbeat.

[Davis]

Do you not recall the recent accident between a powered paraglider and a small transport plane?

[DHMead]

I just now looked that incident up, but the weather conditions at the time were not reported.
Were those two aircraft in the clouds at the time of the collision?
Regardless of the weather factor, simply because the ax has not yet fallen ... yet does not mean that there will not be consequences from this accident.
Moreover, my point about contestants flying in clouds or within the regulated distance clearances from clouds, remains unanswered.
Are those regulations just not being acknowledged and enforced by the USHPA and contest organizers?
I understand that enforcement for each specific violation may be difficult, but it seems that the potential ramifications on our sport on a national and permanent basis may be a mortal wound from which we may never recover.
I would think that any absolute provable violation should result in expulsion from a contest.
As a continuing thought on the subject, there are more than a few videos showing cloud clearance violations. Recently, there have been several severe sanctions on airplane pilots who have posted videos of other regulation violations. These punishments have been harsh and swift and are virtually impossible to reverse.
It seems that, unless the FAA continues to look the other way, our time will come.
Why are pilots so often their own worst enemies?

[CloudHopper]

Assuming there's a problem, we could tackle the problem one step at a time.

For any local area (where a pilot is soaring) an instrument could calculate the theoretical cloudbase elevation based on temperature and relative humidity. Actual cloudbase elevation measurements could also be used in some cases as a refinement, with that measurement data fed back to the instrument.
An on-board flight instrument could then present the real time theoretical cloudbase height margin for the pilot. As the pilot climbs up near his legal limit, he could visually check above him and see whether there will actually be a cloud formed when he gets there or not. On a blue day, he can just keep climbing. On a cloudsuck day, he can decide whether to be legal or not, accepting the consequences of his decision and actions. A small on-board camera pointing upward and forward with the cloudbase height margin and time stamp included in the video should be enough evidence to clear the innocent pilot when that video is presented along with the pilot's track log. That evidence would also prove a pilot to be guilty if he continued to circle and climb under a cloud well after his legal margin became zero.

Horizontal distance from a cloud wall would be more difficult to establish, but I think it's rare that a hang glider pilot can get into an illegal position relative to the horizontal distance from a cloud unless he's already illegally climbed either within a cloud or just outside of one. An exception might be if he gets towed up above the clouds to get started, or if he launches from a very tall mountain like in Hawaii.

[Ksykes]

I just now looked that incident up, but the weather conditions at the time were not reported.
Were those two aircraft in the clouds at the time of the collision?

It was clear and a million. On a pilot website I frequent, the overwhelming majority of posters were questioning what the PPG was doing so close to a class B airspace. The airplane was on an IFR flight plan. I mentioned that the PPG was perfectly legal in Class E and VFR conditions. They then quoted part 103 that everyone else has the right of way and he should have used the eyes in the back of his head to see and avoid. IFR in VFR conditions, they are required to "see and avoid", but many think they can program boxes in the cockpit vs actually looking out. It's a big sky, but now that I've spent time IFR in FL, I would give clouds a pretty wide berth.

[Danielvelez]

Hello everybody.

Regarding the FAA rules for proximity to a cloud of aircrafts that applies to free flight, we (every competition pilot that can climb to cloudbase) have been closer than it is stated. I´m trying to stab myself so I´m not talking about this particular event during the wilotree Nationals. Just saying that we (the main gaggle) were dangerously close to be violating some regulations...

Nevertheless, as we all where playing a sport, lets talk about this perspective instead... None of us where doing something that could have endangered other fellow competitors... We where all doing coordinated turns with plenty of separation and with line of sight of our fellow pilots. None of the competitors got swallowed by the cloud, nor exited without control nor with loose of directional or pitch control of their gliders. Sure we could have been hit by a small airplane that could be "illegaly" crossing through the cloud and exiting from the base or from the side at any given moment, but that is like saying that we need to drive carfully in order to avoid a drunk driver to crash into us...

About the "sportmanship", anyone could have been on my exact spot without compromising the safety of any other fellow competitor, as we did on the other days, starting from the same "cloudbase"... Climbing on the side of a cloud is something that I wish everyone can acomplish one day, as it´s beautiful. If by any means the sun ends up on the oposite side, then your shadow on the cloud would be a view that you just wont be able to forget...

So I think that we should keep climbing to the base of every cloud (before the start that is, because during the race we will be leaving the climbs earlier unless there is a biiiiig blue hole in front of us) and then if we get to the side and there´s still some lift, then start "soaring" with "ridge soaring" rules in mind, meaning the cloud is an untouchable mountain and you are flying in coordination with anyone that is at your height doing the same... Don´t "white out" ever!.

I have been swallowed before (not too much to tell a nice story like Davis Straub´s book) by clouds... once under a +3m/s suck while younger during a free flight, and another like 20 minutes before a start gate during the colombian nationals, while trying to give some indications by radio to my car on a +1m/s... both of them I whited out, but lasted less than 1 minute. Belive me, that´s not a competition advantage. You get dissoriented, you wont be racing "out" of the cloud, and you will be strugling to keep the glider on one direction trying to guess where is the closest edge of the cloud...
Your tracklog will look like a "crazy snake". On one of them I unconciously was speeding "out" feeling like i was climbing and going for a loop... then when leaving the cloud, I found myself almost on a 20° dive attitude!!!

So all in all.. I´m not encouraging to break the rules... Just saying that some rules are made with other kind of aircrafts in mind. I think that common sense and safety are sometimes the way to go. Get closer to the clouds but not so close that you can´t avoid to manouver away of any other aircraft that is flying similar to you. If you can avoid any other hangglider or paraglider that is doing the same you are doing, then, it´s probably safe enough... If you are thinking that maybe a General Aviation airplane is going to appear from nowhere, then probably not even a bigger separation from the cloud could save your $%&#. And during competition always try to be the highest and best placed pilot of the pack, but be aware that everyone will be pushing for your spot, so be prepare for some proximity flying and take notice of the closest to your position and their intentions on every turn.

Anyway, during Wilotree nationals, there was no safety compromise at all to my fellow pilots or myself, nor an unfair advantage gained... unless a "drunk driver" had appeared exiting a cloud by the side at 200mph on GA aircraft...

[DHMead]

Just to be clear, there may also be "sober drivers" who may be on an IFR flight plan who would then be perfectly legal to fly in and out of clouds with no cloud clearance requirements at all. Florida has one of the highest populations of pilots in the country and many large training schools for teaching pilots, including teaching instrument pilots.
IFR airways in the vicinity of the hang gliding flight parks in Florida have minimum altitudes as low as 2000 feet.
The 500 foot below cloud regulation is primarily so pilots on instrument flight plans have time and space to "see and avoid" VFR traffic from which the ATC controllers are not required to (and sometimes are not able to) provide separation.

[Davis]

Just to be completely clear, the issues that are raised here do not concern safety, in fact bringing up the safety issue diverting our attention from the actual issues and made things worse.

The issue was fairness and then actually having a very accurate understanding of what took place.