Indeed.

As an example - the BGA statistics include any accident or incident
reported by a member anywhere in the world. So their numbers include
locations in Spain and South Africa.

The German numbers do not.

I express no opinion on which is a better approach. Merely that the one
is organisational statistics and the other is geographic.

Bruce

On 2013/06/26 11:38 PM, Paul Ruskin wrote:
Hi Bill
So, Andreas verifies the 5 accidents the BFU lists for 2011 was all there was in 900,000 winch launches.

http://rdd.me/dstznowe says the UK suffered 12 for 180,000 launches.

How does that stack up?
UK: 1:15,000
Germany 1:180,000
Seems like Germany has a 12:1 lower accident rate.

Actually, the reference you quote above says that in 2011 there were 12 accidents plus incidents. Not the same as accidents. It's not really credible that the accident rate is 12:1 but the fatality / serious rate roughly the same, as calculated earlier. I think we're going to need to agree to differ on this one though.

It's great that the safer winch launching initiative in the UK has improved things but I think you need to find out what the Germans are doing right. I'd start by watching every "windenstart" video on YouTube. Hint: Time the takeoff rolls

OK - good thought. So I did. First five UK launches 5,2,2,4,2 seconds (roughly). First five German ones 5,4,3,3,2. Again roughly. Not a lot of difference (caveat - not a large sample and dependent on lots of other things). What was interesting was that the first two UK ones were from the same club, and used their old and new winch respectively. I think this time is largely equipment driven - could be that newer winches tend to be higher power. Don't disagree in principle though - and as I mentioned earlier, avoiding wing drop is a current focus at the moment in the UK.

On your point about minimum winch airspeed, I agree totally. It's standard teaching: (BGA Instructors' manual edition 3 page 16-1). I find it strange that gliders are placarded with maximum airspeed but not minimum.

Paul


--
Bruce Greeff
T59D #1771