On Fri, 11 Oct 2013 10:20:54 +0000, 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.

Very interesting, and it may well explain a German photo I found showing
a Libelle around a meter off the ground, cable attached, but pitched up
steeply enough to make me, as a fellow Libelle driver who usually
winches, wonder just what happened during the next 2 or three seconds.

Unfortunately the photo only showed the front half of the glider so I
couldn't see what angle the elevator was at.


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martin@ | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
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