At 06:31 11 October 2013, Del Copeland wrote:
One of the reasons the UK historically had a poor winch
launching safety record was that we copied German methods. In
particular, when we first had powerful German Tost winches we
were told to start with the stick hard back to contain the speed.
This led to a number of (usually fatal) flick spin accidents, so we
realised that this was not a good idea, as have the Germans.
We
now start with the stick forward of centre and control the
rotation rate, and haven't had a flick spin accident for several
years.


Del, when you say "we copied the German methods etc" - who is
the "we"? It was 1969 that I first trained and soloed on the winch
in the UK and I have never personally encountered instruction to
start a winch launch with the stick hard back to contain the speed.

John Galloway