‘There is no much we can do to prevent the "something went terribly
wrong" type of accidents . . . ‘

Sorry, don’t agree, other than such things a wings folding up through
e.g. structural failure, or collision coming from an intruder in the
blind spot.

A properly conducted autotow or winch launch should be conducted such
that ANY eventuality can be handled safely. If there is some
circumstance where that is not possible, it should be foreseeable and
the flight not commenced.

At any stage of the launch, the nose should not be raised to a greater
angle than will allow push over and resumption of normal flying
attitude AND SPEED before needing to commence round out.

I was taught that on autotow, for the first 100 feet, the nose should
be raised very little – the far end of the runway should still be
visible. If power fails or rope breaks, as Martin said, lowering the
nose to the same angle that it was raised (in this case only a small
change of attitude) should therefore be possible.

Higher up, more pitch up is OK because there is more height to
recover. If you can’t, you were too steep too low, and it is the
second kind of accident (‘"someone made a terrible decision" or did
not know what they were doing.’)

That is not to say we don’t have such accidents in the UK. Such UK
accidents have become thankfully more rare But you never HAVE TO have
an accident, if you do it right.

Chris N.
* |