I have visited your site (Dunstable) quite recently and your
winch launches look pretty much the same as what we do at
Lasham these days, presumably because you have taken on
board the recommendations of the BGA Safe Winch Launching
Initiative. This hasn't always been the case, as your launches
used to make us gasp when we visited. The explanation given
was that you have a small site and had to get to get the most
height out of your launches. BTW I don't believe a reasonably
gentle and controlled rotation costs any launch height. You might
get a momentary overspeed, which is not critical low down, but
this then gets converted back into height as you pull back to
control the speed once established in the full climb.

Derek Copeland

At 11:20 11 October 2013, Justin Craig wrote:
At Dunstable we operate a 6 drum Van Gelda winch and have
done so for some
25+ years. It has NEVER been taught to start the launch with
the stick on
the back stop, in fact quite the reverse then followed by gentle
rotation
into a steeper climb. Given the operational restrictions of the
site, we do
climb "steeper" than at other sites, however certainly NOT
before we have a
safe height and safe airspeed to do so.


At 10:20 11 October 2013, Del Copeland wrote:
That's what we told to do when we first acquired our Tost
winches at Lasham, in order to contain the speed and get the
highest possible launches. Prior to that we autotowed, where
you
had to initially climb quite gently as the acceleration was slow
and it took time to build up a safe speed. After a few cases
when
K8's and similar lightweight gliders went into near vertical
climbs
before breaking the weak link, we backed off the instruction.
Fortunately we didn't kill any of the pilots. Dunstable went on
launching quite steeply for some years until they had a
fatality
caused by a flick spin. Certainly when we visited that club we
always used to hold our breath as we watched them winch
launching gliders. Some German pilots seem to pull up more
steeply than we now do, and I note from the accident
statistics
published earlier in this thread that they have had a couple of
flick spin fatalities in recent times.

Derek Copeland

At 09:29 11 October 2013, John Galloway wrote:
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