Anytime your body is moving at over 100 MPH ther is a risk that you may come to a sudden stop. If you do, you will most likely not survive, I don't see how you eliminate this risk without staying on the ground.
There you go with justification, again. The risk is only there if you allow it. Eliminate that risk. Think.
You can certainly do it by staying on the ground. But you don't have to risk coming to a "sudden stop."
When I was eighteen I started spraying. My boss kept me on a tight leash, had us fly formation where he could keep an eye on me. I knew everything then. Tucked in close, I could play in the wake of the lead, and in a tight ag turn, close to the stall and close to the ground, the aircraft would buffet in the leads wake, try to roll off on the outside, tuck in on the inside. I got white knuckled, knew all about stalls and spins, and felt like I had to be in the riskiest place in the world.
My boss put me there to eliminate the risk. One day he 'splained it to me.
So what if the aircraft stalls in that turn? Are you going to come to a sudden stop and just drop out of the sky? If you fly into a vacum all of a sudden, do you quit flying, and disintegrate? Not hardly. Your aircraft has momentum, inertia, energy. You will keep moving forward, and that vortice, that gust, that shear, that buffet you felt will pass, and before you know it you're back into good air again.
We see this with passengers...each bump is a terror, a boogie man hiding beneath the aircraft with a sledge hammer, monsters waiting to saw through the wing and eat them alive. But we know the bump passes, and we will never feel that bump again. Another perhaps but we learn to let each moment slip behind us, as our understanding increases. A wing drops. We're spilling lift, and lift is keeping us alive! We're going to die! No, we just pick up the wing again, hey, we're flying once more. I can do that. Let's do it again. That terrifying bank, that big risk of falling out of your seat to the ground so far below...that went away when we realized that the risk is eliminated by centrifugal/centripetal force...we stay stuck in our seat and don't fall after all.
My gyroplane bunts...pushes over and crashes. PIO, pilot induced oscillation, becomes a factor at any speed, but more so at higher speeds, as can bunting. A risk...it's hurt and killed a lot of would be gyro pilots. So I don't go as fast, not so quick on the controls, I avoid negative loaded maneuvers and pushovers, keep the rotor loaded all the time...eliminate the risk.
I don't want to come to a sudden stop, so I stay alert, I learn and practice and train landing that airplane without a motor. I make students do it, landing on roads, in fields, and convincing them that they'll never have a flight with me without numerous, constant, frequent multiple emergencies and engine failures. They come to get nervous if they aren't having a failure, wandering what's coming next. They learn, and in so doing, learn to eliminate the risk by planning the risk right out of their way.
Hard to run out of fuel by not burning off the bottom half of the tank. There's that risk addressed. Hard to do a lot of things when you plan ahead, and for the things you don't anticipate, training frequently and seriously enough to be prepared is a way of helping eliminate those risks.
Don't justify. Think.
Eliminate.
Find risks, and make them go away. Make them go away by finding alternate soloutions, paths, backups.
I'm walking down the street. You pull up alongside me, grab me, pull me into your car. You have power when I resist, because you're stronger. By pulling away, I pit my strength against yours, and I am gauranteed to lose. I gamble. There's the risk. The risk is that it's a gamble, and the outcome, the odds, aren't good. So I eliminate the risk of you being bigger, stronger. I go that direction. You pull me toward the car, and I decide that's where I want to go, too. I take away your strength, and in so doing eliminate risk, and thereby take control. I now have power over you, and the outcome is now my decision. Find the risk, eliminate it.
You do that by changing what is risky, by creating avenues of escape, by doing whatever is necessary to see that the outcome is favorable.
Long flight over the mountains. Take instruction in flying around the mountains; learn the basics. Stock your airplane. Pick a route that allows you to make a safe forced landing. Carry fuel, flares, a mirror, water, protective clothing. File a flight plan. Practice forced landings. Get some experience flying around terrain. Watch the weather and plan your flight accordingly. Approach the ridges at an angle, carry enough altitude to give you options, choose your route close to help, carry a roadmap to find where roads intersect the mountains, providing you the lowest flyable terrain. Calculate your performance. Get enough sleep, eat a good breakfast, meditate and put aside the divorce or the cat having surgery, or the fact that your three year old daughter just flushed your wedding ring for the sixth time. Eliminate those risks and open yourself up to new possibilities to ensure that you don't come to a "sudden stop."
Yes, you can do it, and unless you do it each and every time, then you have no business being up there.
Say no to speculation and justification. You have the right to be safe, and the privilege to make it so.
