Mike,
Replacing a bent pin with a straight pin seems such an effortless, cost free modification I find it hard to comprehend why it is not adopted.
Not if you're sold a zillion of them over the course of the past ten to twenty years at twenty to forty bucks a pop and, in doing so, would be making an admission that the bent pin job is dangerous.
I can't see a downside and even if it's only a small advantage it's a win, anything more than a small advantage it's win win.
peanuts - 2010/05/28
as to who/what an "Aerotow" is, he was a dangle kite jumper with a SEVERE case of OCD and myopia who made BobK appear to be a wallflower. his posts would go on for months repeating hisself, convinced his was the only way. also rube goldberg incarnate. the straight pin was the only simple/pure advocacy he had, if it was indeed his.
'Cause then the a**holes with the erratic shift keys on Jack's forum would hafta start opening the door on the issue of "AeroTow" knowing what he was talking about ten or fifteen years before the knuckle draggers started seeing dim glows - IF any of the ideas were indeed his.
(Anybody know who that asshole is? Seems to have always kept his identity very well hidden.)
Surely it must be easy for anyone to bench demonstrate the advantage this extra leverage gives you and Tad you must have performed this test to exhaustion.
Brian Vant-Hull - 2008/06/30
Tad's barrel release tested
I, Brian Vant-Hull (hereafter referred to variously as "I" or "me") in the company of James Rooney (hereafter variously referred to as "Jim" or "Rooney" (collectively referred to as "we")) do attest that on Saturday, June 28, I have laid hands upon and inspected, under controlled and numerically repeatable conditions, the barrel release (hereafter referred to as "Tad's Release") constructed by Thaddeus Eareckson (hereafter referred to as "Tad") and have compared it under identical conditions to the 'Bailey' barrel release.
We found that under a load of 194 pounds the Bailey release required a very strong tug (I couldn't do it at first) while Tad's release could be actuated with the friction of two fingers at twice that load. Rooney could actuate the Bailey release immediately, but admitted they practiced this during tandem training, so he knew to wrap his fingers over the top and pull vigorously. I do not believe that if the forces became this strong I could operate the Bailey release with the alacrity required under lockout conditions, but could actuate the Tad release. I won't speak for Jim, but
Under weight of these observations, I do attest that TAD's RELEASE is SUPERIOR to the BAILEY RELEASE and that the BAILEY RELEASE is SERIOUSLY FLAWED UNDER HIGH LOADS.
In witness thereof, I attach my signature and moreover have purchased Tad's release.
Not if you've been kicked out of the flight park after scaring the crap out of too many people with test rig demos of how easily the s*** the flight park is selling people locks up.
Of all the things that might improve safety the ones that are easy and cost nothing must be the first to be adopted.
But first we've gotta wait a decade or so until memory of Tad fades enough for Highland Aerosport's crack engineering team to be able to take credit. Probably just kill another three or four pilots in the interim.
I just checked the Oz Report store in the course of composing this post. Looks like the Shopkeeper must've read my review of his ever popular "Mini Barrel Release" - the one that is "much stronger than your weaklink", "is the most aerodynamic one available", "gets out of your way right away", and "is small and easily stored".
http://kitestrings.prophpbb.com/post91.html#p91The ad for that piece of crap - and the ones for the insanely wrap prone bridles that go with it - are completely gone. They were up twelve days ago. He's gone beyond just locking down every thread that starts hitting too close to the truth. We've got that son of a bitch SCARED.
It's entirely possible that Shane was killed on his equipment. If that's the case we may have him by the balls. Can anybody in Arizona look into this?
Sam,
Thanks for the welcome and the participation in this discussion.
So please Tad, don't write us off as stupid, because we all don't have that piece of paper.
I don't write people of as stupid because they don't have pieces of paper. I write people off as stupid because they can't understand the principle of a second class lever as well as the first Palm Cockatoo to break off part of a tree and fashion it as a drumstick to beat on a hollow trunk a million years ago. Palm Cockatoos don't use bent sticks for applications that require straight ones.
I write people off as stupid when they won't even LOOK at a piece of paper with solid scientific data on it but feel qualified to comment and contradict the data anyway.
I write people off as stupid when they make statements like:
Would/could not release at all. No better than any others.
when it bloody well does and very obviously IS - as one can tell just by looking at it.
Your release, like someone else commented, and IMO a malfunction could occur due to the diameter of the pen's eye.
I don't give a rat's a** about someone else's comments or opinions if they're not based on anything vaguely resembling reality. Your buddy Donnell was and is of the OPINION that a tow can be kept safe and under control by using a light weak link. That OPINION is flatly contradicted by the reality of and data from a lot of death and destruction.
In may be your OPINION that the diameter of the pin's eye may cause a malfunction but if I configure the connection like this:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aerotowrelease/3348818371/or this:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aerotowrelease/329661473/you will not be able with the use of both hands to deliberately induce a failure with a gun to your head.
I used to offer thousand dollar wagers to the mouthy little shits in this neck of the woods and everything would immediately get real quiet.
And they've gone up on tens of thousands of tandem tows with never a hint of a problem - if you attach any importance to that sort of thing - which I don't.
Why is it 15 or 20 times larger than the diameter of the white and green cord? Supplier availibility?
Yeah. I'm not a machinist and so sometimes I'm limited by off-the-shelf parts. But I can do better with that goddam little two and a half dollar pin than the Wallaby flavor a**holes can with a hundred dollar spinnaker shackle.
And when I use that same pin in this application:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aerotowrelease/3348916673/I start needing a real good chunk of that diameter, so I'm not all that interested in reducing it.
I can see how that "release" would not release at all, especially with 400lb of load.
And IF the dread OPINION malfunction were an actual possibility, why would the load have the slightest bearing on the probability?
In your release that diameter need not be any larger than the line running thru it. And if I were a computer graphics type, I could "draw you a picture" to show why.
No. Unless you wanna carry a few extra barrels around in your harness the eye needs to be large enough to keep the barrel from falling off the body of the release after it's blown. And I don't need anybody drawing any pictures to teach me anything about the functionality of a barrel release, but thanks anyway.
If you wanna do something useful with your time then engineer something better than what's been available before - like Joe Street's currently doing in Ontario - and put a copy or two in the air.
Again, thank you for participating in this thread. I hope you will continue to do so.
Bob,
I don't know how closely you've followed my "political" career at USHPA, but I tend to believe we should be very liberal with the information we give to our pilots, and we should be very conservative with the amount of regulations we place on our pilots. I believe good information should empower our pilots to make good decisions - on their own.
They've been proving over and over for thirty years that they're too goddam STUPID. How can you read the sketchy scraps that have leaked from this most recent clusterfuck and possibly reach any other conclusion? Do you have any idea how far backwards we've come since 1974?
Mike, feel free to step in here and tell Bob about the Brooks and Lake Bridles and the Koch two stage. The goddam Bailey release has been using a bent pin for twenty years 'cause hang glider pilots are only about a tenth as smart as Palm Cockatoos. My own parrot demonstrates a better understanding of the second class lever than Bobby has every time she slams her cage door. She understands fulcrums and lever arms and knows how to make them work REAL effectively.
We don't give pilots information about gliders and let build, modify, and fly anything they want. For all practical purposes we've regulated away the ability of people to put anything in the air that hasn't undergone extensive and expensive HGMA certification testing. The result of this is LESS expensive flying and MORE personal freedom because people with snapped spinal cords and torn aortas don't have any personal freedom and a lot of other people hafta spend the money they were saving for new wings on long term nursing care facilities.
The gliders are safe, beautiful, and evolved probably to near the limit of what's possible BECAUSE they're heavily regulated and pilots don't mess with them. The total ABSENCE of regulations and standards for towing meant that I never once had a safe aerotow. And because little shits like Adam Elchin can use public facilities and arbitrarily decide they're gonna refuse to tow someone just for trying to make it safe I've been effectively deprived of some of my most treasured freedoms.
Yeah, we've been conservative with our towing regulations alright. And as a consequence loosely organized crime now totally owns it.
That's why I'm so happy to give you a forum to speak. I don't know if you're right or wrong (yet), but I know that it's wrong to silence or shackle any member of the pilot community who has something to say.
We've got liars, thieves, and killers in the pilot community. We've got a neighbor to the north with a manslaughter conviction for failing to clip a tandem passenger in. I've towed with a tug developer who shortly thereafter blew the girlfriend away then turned the gun on himself. Not to pick on the accidental killer or the totally-lost-it guy but let's just be aware that we've got a range and the freedom to speak is only a good thing if we've got enough of a critical mass of intelligence and integrity to reach reality based resolutions.
And we've gotta keep a lot of heat on douchebags like Tracy and Head Trauma who've survived for decades by declaring victory and leaving. They're the real serial killers.
So I will do my best to give you a fair platform for your points, and I will do what I can to help you illustrate those points. But I will do the same for anyone with a differing view as well. I want the US Hawks to be a place where we can help each other seek the truth and spread it. I want it to be a place where substance speaks louder than politics. I think that's what we both want for our sport, and I think that's why we're both here.
Towing is pure high school physics. Has absolutely nothing to do with views or opinions. So as long as f=ma - instead of whatever Davis or Jack say it does - I'm gonna win. I remember hearing a quote from one of our atomic weapons people addressing somebody concerned about security, nuclear secrets, and the Russians andor Chinese. Something like, "They're not SECRETS. It's PHYSICS." And physics is physics - even in Florida, Georgia, Maryland, Michigan, Kansas, and Texas (at least as far down as Kingsville anyway).
But I doubt I'll ask the FAA to step in to mandate anything for anyone.
The FAA IS CURRENTLY MANDATING what we do in aerotowing. It's just that they're only enforcing things that make it a lot more expensive and less available and enforcing NOTHING already on the books that makes it safer and cheaper.
Our own self imposed and FAA accepted regulations say that the release has gotta be able to handle twice weak link.
Lauren Tjaden - 2008/03/23
When Jim got me locked out to the right, I couldn't keep the pitch of the glider with one hand for more than a second (the pressure was a zillion pounds, more or less), but the F'ing release slid around when I tried to hit it. The barrel release wouldn't work because we had too much pressure on it.
Anyhow, the tandem can indeed perform big wingovers, as I demonstrated when I finally got separated from the tug.
The goddam bent pin Bailey release can't even handle a freaking QUARTER weak link. And that's a light weak link for that glider. You can't EDUCATE Lauren 'cause she loves people like Head Trauma and Bo Hagewood and she's just gonna keep doing what all of her dear friends are doing. If she has a triple equipment malfunction in the space of two seconds on a training exercise it's perfectly OK 'cause it's "INDUSTRY STANDARD" equipment - none of this homemade crap.
So you're seeing absolute proof of an undeniably stupid and dangerous piece of equipment being used to take up tourists thirty times a day on a single glider in flagrant violation of our own existing regulations.
You've tried to talk to Lauren, she's not gonna do anything, Quest isn't gonna do anything, and neither the Towing Committee nor USHGA itself will even listen to you...
How are you gonna feel when some kid gets killed on his fourteenth birthday present dream flight if you haven't gone to the next level in the chain of command while we're all waiting for this US Hawks Utopia to kick in?
We don't hafta have something that handles TWICE weak link but it needs to be at least ONCE weak link - not under a quarter.
Instead, I'll work with you to draft better towing guidelines for the US Hawks Hang Gliding Association than the ones that USHPA uses.
They're done. They're excellent. They've been gathering dust for two years over at:
http://www.energykitesystems.net/Lift/h ... index.htmlThey're yours. Take them. They would've saved Shane and they still can save that kid.
If it stands up to the alternatives, then I'll endorse it as my recommendation as well (for whatever that's worth). Fair enough?
Try this thought experiment.
I've got a gun to you're head. You've gotta choose NOW. You don't get to look at the alternative (singular - the only other alternative out there). You've gotta make your decision based upon what you know of me, my behavior, the validity of my logic, your understanding of my engineering, the expressed opinions of others... versus what you know of USHGA, my other enemies, and the record. Pick one.
I didn't understand all those HGAA fireworks and maneuvers. Didn't need to. I knew you and Scott and I knew Jack.
Unless/until I get your stamp you are - by default - giving your stamp to the establishment. And that's a stamp for no-standards aviation. And that's not a flavor of aviation I'm ever gonna recommend to anyone about whom I give half a rat's a**.
It also applies to politics. I think we need an alternative national organization (like the US Hawks), but those who hold the current monopoly will try to drive wedges between our members to undermine our chances. We can't let that happen. We can't afford another repeat of the HGAA fiasco, so I'm asking everyone to keep that in mind as we discuss all of our topics ... including towing.
And I say that it's better that Hawks collapses and dies rather than get a single nut or bolt of aviation fundamentals wrong and cripple or kill someone as a consequence. I don't have much of a problem if somebody comes over here, screws a pooch, and buys a farm but if he wants to die because of botched theory, inadequate and nonexistent standards, and institutional incompetence there's an existing framework that's well qualified to handle that approach.
We need to all be on the right page before we start rolling and I'd rather be part of a two member organization with everybody a hundred percent on the right page than a thousand member organization with camaraderie and politics trumping aviation and people 99.9 percent on the right page. If we do the latter we've made ourselves another edition of USHGA and we'll have a similar fatality rate.
So let's stay in conversations until we're all on the page that conventional aviation perfected a century ago.
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