US Hawks Hang Gliding Association • View topic

by **DarthVader** » Fri Aug 05, 2011 9:51 pm

Pilot Jody does not remember if he tried to un hook his release or not, from previous videos I have seen him fly and he had been releasing himself from the towline. Not unless his release failed and was not able to escape from the tow. Pilot Jody did a 180 and down wind run, it appears that Pilot Jody is still on the line not able to un hook, doing the 180 so he would not over fly the line, that was a smart move, however, with the line draging on the ground and obstructions on the ground the line may have hook on something pulling pilot down in to a crash :ugeek:

by **DarthVader** » Fri Aug 05, 2011 11:17 pm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWM0yIh3_mw

watch video

by **Bill Cummings** » Sat Aug 06, 2011 10:27 am

DarthVader wrote:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWM0yIh3_mw

watch video

I wonder if he forgot that he had the under the basetube bridle hooked up and only released the over the basetube tow bridle. I was thinking he was a little too high for a training flight .

For a ground skim training, the under the basetube tow bridle would not be needed until the flight plan included a tow to altitude where the top rope would then contact the top of the basetube. ( I don't care for this type of towing.) I'm only commenting on what was being shown and (with a gun to my head) what could have helped provided a better outcome if someone told me I had to do it this way or else.

I would like to see a release cord that gets too short if the student pilot wanders off the tow path. Also one that let the pilot keep both hands on the basetube while releasing.

The video distance from the glider during the crash is of no help. A good training debriefing video camera mounted on the glider would now have helped us all learn from the event.

A one point tow bridle for ground skim training would have less to go wrong until after the pilot had several skimming flights under his belt (harness) and he became comfortable being off the ground under tow.
Then if you wanted to stick with this method add the under the basetube tow bridle for topping out on the towline.

by **Bob Kuczewski** » Sat Aug 06, 2011 10:57 am

billcummings wrote:I would like to see a release cord that gets too short if the student pilot wanders off the tow path. Also one that let the pilot keep both hands on the basetube while releasing.

I believe that Tad has developed a release system that allows the pilot to keep both hands on the base tube. It hasn't been widely accepted, and maybe this is a situation where it could shine.

by **Bill Cummings** » Sat Aug 06, 2011 12:59 pm

bobk wrote:
billcummings wrote:I would like to see a release cord that gets too short if the student pilot wanders off the tow path. Also one that let the pilot keep both hands on the basetube while releasing.

I believe that Tad has developed a release system that allows the pilot to keep both hands on the base tube. It hasn't been widely accepted, and maybe this is a situation where it could shine.

SECOND ATTEMPT TO POST (# 2) :evil:

Bob,
I’ve spent a good bit of time studying Tad’s links some of which can be found on:
http://ushawks.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=727&sid=e18eb48132460c1ebf122d46e5c0eb55

I’ve seen a lot of towing ideas and equipment over my 33 years of towing hang gliders and being towed in hang gliders.

The procedures and equipment that Tad advocates, to me, look to be the best.

Anyone that has a sharp eye for safety will take some time to study his posts.

It took me a while to go over his “message” because as a “messenger” I was reluctant to put up with the aggravation, angst, contentiousness, leaving me in a complete state of pissedawcity. (NEW WORD I JUST ADDED TO MY SPELL CHECKER!)

My least favorite method of towing is Aero Towing! My most favorite way of towing is Platform Towing.

Hooking myself to any kind of bridle that requires it to unthread to separate me from the towline leaves me with the least amount of joy of all forms of towing!

If you put a gun to my head and said, “Aero Tow!” I would want Tad’s gear.

Not the mandatory bent barrel pins and green spot weaklinks at most of the Aero Tow parks.
But Hey! That’s just me!

by **TadEareckson** » Sun Aug 07, 2011 5:59 am

I would like to see a release cord that gets too short if the student pilot wanders off the tow path.

1. That's EXACTLY how Brad Anderson and Eric Aasletten were configured on the last flights of their short lives - 1990/03/29 and 1990/07/05 respectively. Sometimes the only survivable option one has after wandering or getting blown off the tow path is to hang on and get back on the tow path.

2. The operative word in that sentence is PILOT. When there's only one person on board he's also the Pilot In Command. In real aviation that's the person who gets to call the shots on what goes on with his plane.

3. We need to start treating all solo folk on hang gliders as PILOTS - be they Hang Fives in the tie-breaker round of an aerobatics competition or people skimming down the dune or tow path three minutes after the first times they've hooked into gliders.

4. In ALL tow situations there's a copilot who's job it is to always manage but not irreversibly eliminate the thrust. If the thrust becomes unmanageable, usually due to alignment, rarely to degree, it`s the sole responsibility of the Pilot In Command to eliminate it - not of somebody on a winch a quarter mile away, a fuzzy little piece of fishing line, or a lanyard which auto triggers at some magic angle predetermined to be the edge of propriety.

5. Configuring a release assembly to blow in such a manner is analogous to sending a student Cessna pilot up with a device which kills his engine if he deviates too much from the flight plan, for any reason, on the assumption that he's always gonna be better off coming down than he is going up.

Manned Kiting
The Basic Handbook of Tow Launched Hang Gliding
Daniel F. Poynter
1974

"Never take your hands off the bar." - Tom Peghiny

Donnell Hewett - 1981/10

Sometimes I am asked if a more conventional release mechanism would be preferred. Specifically one wonders whether it would be wiser to have a release lever right there by the pilot's hand rather than located on his abdomen. Well, yes, it is true that a conventional hand release would be quicker to release than a body release, but in a typical emergency situation, the pilot's hand release is seldom located at the right spot on the control bar to effectively initiate the release, and in a truly panic situation, it is much easier for a person to find a release on his own body than at some specific location on the control bar. Furthermore, it would seem that a single release on the body would be as easy to operate as the two separate releases on a conventional system. The body release also frees the pilot to move his hands anywhere over the control bar and to change from prone to erect flying or vice versa.

Bill Cummings - 2010/02/09

Ask Doctor Hewett to list for you the issues that need to be addressed for a safe tow flight.

Bill Cummings - 2011/08/07

Also one that let the pilot keep both hands on the basetube while releasing.

Those statements can't all be right. Pick two.

...and he became comfortable being off the ground under tow.

The point at which one becomes comfortable being off the ground under tow - below two hundred feet anyway - is the point at which one should probably be looking for a new hobby.

It hasn't been widely accepted...

It's been widely attacked, denigrated, suppressed, and ignored.

...and maybe this is a situation where it could shine.

Like a supernova.

It's an aerotow system but at the beginning of the clip you can see a launch dolly sitting idle behind the glider and the tow angle is low enough to qualify for aero for probably all but the last couple of seconds. My call is that if he had been on my system he'd have gone home very happy at the end of that day. (Maybe we can invite him over here for a discussion).

I've spent a good bit of time studying Tad's links...

Thanks.

The procedures and equipment that Tad advocates, to me, look to be the best.

Many of which were carved in granite in the early Seventies in hang gliding - and probably on the Outer Banks at the beginning of the Twentieth Century.

Anyone that has a sharp eye for safety will take some time to study his posts.

It's astonishing and depressing to realize what a tiny percentage of hang glider pilots fall into that category.

It took me a while to go over his "message" because as a "messenger" I was reluctant to put up with the aggravation, angst, contentiousness, leaving me in a complete state of pissedawcity.

I imagine that Ralph Nader left lotsa folk in complete states of pissedawcity when he campaigned for seat belts as mandatory components of automobiles in the Sixties.

My least favorite method of towing is Aero Towing!

How much have you done, behind what, and using what equipment?

My most favorite way of towing is Platform Towing.

It's undoubtedly the best, safest way to blast a glider into the air, but...

1. There's no cheap easy way to configure a really good release system.

2. In requires a lot of runway to get up to any kind of altitude.

3. Pretty hard to beat a tug for getting into air in which you can stay up on the first try.

And, by the way...

If you ask Doctor Hewett to list for you the issues that need to be addressed for a safe tow flight, platform towing - as it's commonly and best practiced - is gonna flunk on about three quarters of them.

And if Lemmy Lopez had had his brief introduction to hang gliding at Hearne instead of Kingsville before going home and striking out on his own he'd almost certainly now be a healthy and valuable member of the South Texas flying community - instead of a rapidly fading memory.

Zack C - 2011/03/04

As for platform launching, I was nervous about it when I started doing it. It looked iffy, like things could get bad fast. I've since logged around a hundred platform launches and have seen hundreds more. Never once was there any issue. I now feel platform launching is the safest way to get a hang glider into the air (in the widest range of conditions). You get away from the ground very quickly and don't launch until you have plenty of airspeed and excellent control.

Platform launching works because it solves real problems rather than attempting to conform to a thirty year old list of mostly lunatic and obviously false assumptions.

Hooking myself to any kind of bridle that requires it to unthread to separate me from the towline leaves me with the least amount of joy of all forms of towing!

1. There have been hundreds of thousands of aerotow launches conducted with the kind of crap equipment typified by the Quest Perfection Squad we've just seen on The Davis Show. Can you cite ONE instance of anyone getting so much as a scraped elbow as a consequence of a bridle wrap incident?

2. I make REALLY GOOD two point bridles which probably bring the risk of a wrap down to something in the ballpark of getting hit by falling space junk.

3. I've engineered my system such that I can deal with an emergency release - with a bridle wrap - with both hands on the basetube in about a third of the time it takes a platform tower to start thinking about prying one of his hands loose to start groping around for his lanyard. The secondary weak link is almost certain to blow under normal tension plus the jolt and, failing that, I just let go of the string in my teeth. The ONLY things that scare me in aerotowing are the a**holes strapped into their Dragonflies and their weak links.

Dallas Willis - 2009/04/13

Wingspan34,

Could you go into more detail about your push button truck tow release and the lanyard version you experimented with? I'm truck towing an awful lot lately and have yet to find a release that doesn't scare the heck out me.

4. Show me a platform tower with an IQ of fifteen or better and a release that doesn't scare him shitless.

If you put a gun to my head and said, "Aero Tow!" I would want Tad's gear.

Meaning you've never aerotowed?

But Hey! That's just me!

No, we're making a dent. And some of us can help make the dent a lot bigger by making it a lot harder for members of the Quest Perfection Squad to quietly ooze away from conversations without answering embarrassing questions.