Good historical write up, Mike, but the intent of my post was the
current fear of CG hooks.Â* Today pretty much every glider has a tail
wheel with a rubber tire and plenty of rudder authority.Â* It's the same
as the apparent fear in the US of ground launching.Â* I could start
another thread about that...

Thinking back to my first LS-6 (I owned two in partnerships), it had a
CG hook only and a funny little hard plastic tail wheel which had no
traction at all.Â* I would equate that to a skid on pavement. IIRC, it
also came with a steel plate tail skid so I guess the plastic wheel was
an improvement, but much.Â* My solution was not to install a nose hook,
but to replace the plastic wheel with a roller blade tire (all of $3
used).Â* Worked like a champ and I never ground looped the ship.Â* Neither
did my partner.

Oh, and we did a boat load of ground launches in that ship. Something
that would not have been too much fun with a nose hook.

On 3/28/2020 3:13 PM, Michael Opitz wrote:
At 15:28 28 March 2020, Dan Marotta wrote:
To lift a title from The Bard and, since there's not much else going
on
these days, and to give homage to Roseanne Roseannadana...

What's all this nonsense I keep hearing about CG hooks?

My first glider had a nose hook and it was easy to control on
launch and
tow.ÂÂ* All the rest had CG hooks (only) and I never noticed a
difference
either on take off or tow.ÂÂ* The only advantage I ever noticed about
either was on ground launch where the nose hook was at a distinct
disadvantage.

So, for me at least, a CG hook would be a must for any non-self-
launch
glider.ÂÂ* I think that those who make a big bugaboo about CG hooks
are
doing a disservice to gliding.

Let the games begin...

--
Dan, 5J


The issue came up back in the early 1980's when most all high
performance gliders only had C/G hooks for drag reduction
purposes. A lot of those gliders still had tail skids as well. Stack
a bunch of them on a paved runway for a competition and watch
out! With any kind of crosswind at all, the gliders didn't have
enough rudder authority at low speed to counter impending ground
loops with any kind of weathervaning at all. Add a wing drop due
to uneven tow plane prop vortices, and we had all sorts of ground
loops into other gliders, cars and people on the sidelines. Using
dive brakes to kill the lift on both wings on initial take-off roll helped

with the wing drop issues, but until tail wheels became the norm,
the tail skids would not track well on a hard surface. This lack of tail
tracking ability coupled with a C/G release location meant that once
a little weathervaning started, there was no way to stop it until you
had rudder authority, and a lot of times, that was too late. The nose
hook always pulls in front of the C/G to self damp or return the nose
towards the centerline, which is extremely helpful until one gets
rudder authority. There was way too much excitement on the
contest take-off grid until tail wheels and nose hooks came to be the
norm, and that's why there is the nose hook preference on newer
gliders.

RO


--
Dan, 5J