On Friday, April 28, 2017 at 12:00:58 PM UTC+3, Chris Rollings wrote:
At 01:13 28 April 2017, firsys wrote:
In his excellent and erudite post on aerotow upset testing, Chris
Rollings
said " the speed at which things happen is proportional to the length of
th=
e rope"
I think he intended to say INVERSELY proportional to the length.

Directly proportional, if the rope is twice as long, the time the
divergence takes is also twice as long.

The time is directly proportional to the rope length. The *speed* at which it happens is inversely proportional.

But I'm not convinced and angle achieved in divergence is even the primary factor. If the glider goes into "winch launch" mode then it's pulling backwards with a tension of its own weight or more. Winch launch weak links range from 500 - 1000 kg. How many tugs have the thrust to prevent being drastically slowed -- and stalled -- by that vs the normal 50 - 100 kg tension in the rope? None, I should think. Even if the rope is thousands of feet long very bad things are going to happen.