On Wed, 7 Jan 2004 19:06:40 -0700, "Bill Daniels"
wrote:


The concern about airtow with CG hooks is for a condition that lies well
outside the experience of 99% of glider pilots. If you airtow with a CG
hook, keep in mind that a dragon lurks outside the normal airtow box. Don't
go there.

Bill Daniels


I completely agree Bill.

I'm a long rope fan because the normal box is larger. In fact I think
it is not a linear function of rope length as the first 100 feet of
rope is probably counts for little due to pilot/sailplane
perception/reaction times.

There are other dragons which have happened in Oz. Get too low on low
tow, put a large bow in the rope and have it catch in the aileron/wing
gap. Good reason to have a weak link at *both* ends of the rope.

Having once done a cross country tow in low tow on a 130 foot rope and
then discovered that the towplane exhaust system was about to fall off
makes me not a low tow fan.

I worry about the "we've required nose tow releases so we've fixed
that problem" thinking. The problem didn't get fixed because nobody
had the gumption to require a retrofit on ALL gliders. Politically
impossible because when the chips were down it would be impossible to
justify. Instead just stick the owners of new gliders with the cost
because if they are buying a new glider they can afford it.

The LBA/BGA/GFA/insert your civil aviation bureaucracy name here
bureaucracy get to feel good because they have "improved" safety and
can boast about this, most of the glider pilots don't care one way or
the other as they are unaffected and tow pilots are at just as much
risk as before as the fleet replacement only occurs slowly. Great!

Requiring longer ropes would have been cheaper and would give
immediate benefits but here we are still thinking 150 feet is
adequate. Wonderful.

Meanwhile we've had one mid air on tow in Oz. One side benefit of 250
foot ropes is that you do have time to look around while on tow
instead of maintaining station with all your attention.

Anybody who hasn't towed on a 250 foot rope I suggest you try it. It
took one tow in 1982 for me to be a convert.

Meanwhile realise as the tow pilot opens the throttle that you are
potentially less than a minute from proving that youve thought about
the low altitude tow emergency enough to carry it out successfully.
It could be a rope break, engine failure or getting out of station or
any one or more of quite a number of other things. Tom Knauff had a
good article about this that I saw in Gliding Kiwi.

Mike Borgelt