Rick
Thanks for the heads up. I thought the article on Pitcairn was very interesting
since last evening
Al VP2AL was on from Pitcairn.
Larry K1ZW
-----Original Message-----
From: towertalk-bounces@contesting.com
[mailto:towertalk-bounces@contesting.com] On Behalf Of Rick
Karlquist
Sent: Friday, August 10, 2007 9:45 PM
To: towertalk@contesting.com
Subject: [TowerTalk] Article on mental errors related to climbing accidents
The is an excellent article in the August 2007 issue of National Geographic
Adventurer on page 44
available at:
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/survival/skills/index.html
See: How to survive almost anything/Why smart people make dumb mistakes.
This talks about why people who should know what they are doing in dangerous
situations make mental
errors and have accidents.
Accidents are not always due to insufficient training or experience, and in
fact experience can
actually cause accidents due to complacency.
Although it talks about rock climbing, the parallels to tower climbing are
obvious. Basically, the
problem is that the really experienced person goes on automatic pilot and stops
observing the
situation around him. The fix for this is "mindfulness".
Continually pay attention to your surroundings, don't take
things for granted. They talk about a forest fire fighter
who sets his watch to ring every hour. Then he does a sanity check. Where's
the fire now? Are we
where we belong? Do we need to drink water? Is there anything unusual about
this fire?
etc.
An example of mindfulness in tower climbing is the yellow jacket problem.
Around here they nest in
any shiny pipe. You have to always think about them. Another one is black
widows.
Anyway, I think all tower climbers will find this article well worth reading.
In the same issue (also on-line) is an interesting article about Pitcairn
Island, that rare DXCC
counter. For some reason, the article doesn't mention ham radio at all :-)
Rick N6RK
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