Taking things out of order 'cause I am and, for a while now, have been pretty backed up and I wanna get some relative quickies out of the way...
Bob,
Tad, I generally agree with Pilgrim's comments above.
Including his rather interesting interpretation of the US Constitution and the principles it represents? Be very very careful 'cause you're really really REALLY setting yourself up.
You continually bolster people's decisions to ban you...
GREAT!!! I'm up to about seven now and a shoo-in for the Guinness Book. Everything else is gravy.
...and you continue to make me look foolish for keeping you on this forum.
I feel your pain.
Tad, maybe you've forgotten what it's like to launch in these conditions.
Nope. Nobody who's racked up the kind of Jockeys Ridge hours I have forgets what it's like to launch in any conditions you wanna name - 'cept maybe dust devils.
Once the right wing began to lift, any attempt to launch could have been deadly.
And pivoting back on a wing locked down and stationary couldn't?
"Mr. Eareckson, you're gonna be going off launch in a roll. Would you prefer to:
a) have a hundred and fifty pounds of dead weight on your low wing? or
b) not have a hundred and fifty pounds of dead weight on your low wing?"
"I dunno. How soon you need an answer?"
It could have been much worse for him to be airborne in a turn at the cliff than tethered to my hand on his left wire.
1. Maybe.
2. Taking the correct action of you pushing the left wing out to get it flying off the table, I'd have opted for taking a chance with becoming airborne in a turn. That way I have both the possibility of flying away unscathed without losing the option of deliberately groundlooping it into a 180 the way you forced him to - granted, at his idiot instruction.
Furthermore, I don't think we should set a precedent of taking decisions out of the pilot's hands in our sport.
That guy ceased being a pilot the moment his right wing came up and he failed to make the right call with respect to your action. He instantly became something better defined as a passenger, cargo, or victim.
For example, how do you feel about tug pilots who feel they can "fix" what's wrong on tow by simply "giving up the rope"?
1. You're talking about somebody busy flying his own plane 250 feet away looking at a mirror in which objects are closer than they appear.
2. Gliders and tugs do not communicate. The glider cannot tell the tug to do the wrong thing. A good tug pilot will maneuver into into a position and regulate his power to the glider's best advantage whether he wants him to or not.
3. If the appropriate emergency action is to immediately terminate the tow and the glider isn't doing it the guy in the back has demonstrated that he is not a pilot.
4. If the tow is not terminated and the tug has maneuvered appropriately before the glider slams in, the crash is not the tug's fault or responsibility (ignoring the issues of whether he should've been towing that guy with his qualifications and/or equipment in the first place).
5. There is never a situation in which a competent tow pilot can't release himself (a helluva lot faster than the tug can) if and when he needs to. By contrast there are zillions of situations on launch (and in the air) in which there's no freakin' way anyone can make a wing stay or go where he wants or NEEDS it to be.
6. A tug driver is not the same as a launch crewman. He IS partially piloting my plane through a long takeoff and the duration of the climb. He would be analogous to someone in the cockpit controlling a throttle to which the Pilot In Command had no access.
Tad, do you "THINK" he would NOT have been in better shape with just one person on the nose wires?
I have virtually no doubt that had just one person on the nose been present that crash wouldn't have happened. But I'd also guesstimate that that launch would've been about twenty times safer with two people on the sidewires than one person on the nose. (And I haven't yet heard that there was no one else available to assist.)
More people might have helped, if they were all coordinated...
Beyond walking and chewing gum level, just how coordinated do they hafta be?
On the dunes you don't soar unless the wind is at least a little bit scary. And the soaring doesn't start to get easy until the wind is really scary. And damn near ALL of my launches were assisted by whichever two tourists happened to be standing nearest at the time. All you need is a little ten year old kid common sense and plenty of actual ten year old kids did just fine.
Of course I would have stopped the launch (if possible) if I saw the pilot wasn't hooked in.
You're on the nose, the "pilot's" COMMAND is "Clear!" You're overriding his decision (and very likely saving his life).
If you don't recognize the difference between those two situations...
You're on the sidewire, the "pilot's" command is to hold his wing back, you know it's the wrong call but you comply, and he's instantly in a situation in which he can very easily be killed.
This is all gray area stuff and I'm not fan of blind adherence to rigid convention at the expense of common sense.
On 1977/03/27 at Tenerife because a 747 copilot did not override the erroneous decision of the Pilot In Command to take off prior to receiving clearance, 592 people were killed or fatally injured - including the copilot and pilot in command. (That's about twenty percent of the 9/11 attacks. Not bad for not even trying.) If I'm the copilot my feet are staying on the brakes 'cause I'd rather take a chance on losing my career and spending five years in prison than losing my life.
Some time in the early Eighties I was wiring gliders into the South Bowl at the annual dunes competition at Jockeys Ridge. The wind was scary strong to begin with and when I had some totally clueless Hang Two twit in position a sustained monster surge began blasting through. She was radiating scalding waves of the nobody's- gonna-tell-me-anything frequency and when she - astonishingly and confidently - said "Clear" I thought "OK, you're the Pilot In Command" and compliantly stepped aside. She went up like the freakin' space shuttle, stalled, turned 180, and fell back into a parked Lancer at the top. Not injured but in retrospect my response to "Clear" should've been "Phuck that, Pilot In Command. We're gonna wait until this blows through and who's name besides yours is on your rating card?"
1991/12/22 I was launching a Hang Two in 15-25 at the south ramp over McConnellsburg. A competent pilot, King Newman, was wasted on the nose, I was on the left wire, a wuffo who assured us he had assisted with lotsa launches was on the right, instead of the nose where he'd have been mostly harmless, and a Two was on the tail holding against ramp suck. Tom did a hang check, I said, "OK, let's pick up the glider.", and the nose man cleared. Tom got up and let the glider float up and I looked out into the valley.
I was having to let my wing up awfully high to keep the glider level and was wondering when the bozo on the other wing was gonna start arresting his and bringing it back down. When I finally realized there was no bozo on the other wing and that both of those total morons had simply walked away right after the glider came up. I had my arm fully extended and was standing on my tiptoes and the glider was already in a bit of a roll.
I thought "Hope you're ready, have a good flight!" and let go without instruction from the Pilot In Command. He, in shock and awe mode, drifted to the left and back until he was surrounded by sapling tops. King and I both shouted in perfect stereo, "PULL IN!!!", Tom's brain kicked back on, and he continued on for a good flight for an hour and a half or so.
If he had begun yelling for me to hold him back, I'd have said, "Phuck that, have a good flight!"
If he had begun yelling for me to hold him back and I had deferred to the Sacred Call of The Pilot In Command he'd have been so dead so fast and I'd still be having a really hard time living with myself.
Also...
If you beam me into that situation and give me a choice between launching level but unhooked or launching rolled with a two hundred pounder clamped on my left wing I just might go with "a". I seriously think I'd have a better shot in that kind of lift and a chance for the parachute to work.
The people in this sport who are best at threat assessment and flexible responses are the ones most likely to keep themselves alive and healthy. They're also the ones you want on wire crew, winches, and tugs.
I think you would do the sport a great service by providing a concise distillation of that expertise in a book or a document that shows pilots the safest ways to conduct towing operations.
The book was written by Dan Poynter in 1974. All we gotta do is Photoshop the pictures to show the lower bridle half going to the pilot instead of the control frame.
Instead, I think you just want to start arguments for you to "win". You've got a chip on your shoulder and it's more important for you to demonstrate how "smart" you are on each topic than to actually contribute to the safety that you claim is so important to you.
What? I gotta choose? I can't multitask? Boooooring.
P.S. It now occurs to me that if Tom hadn't done that stupid, useless hang check on the ramp that the crisis situation in which we found ourselves would not have evolved.
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