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While towing for Hollister, I noticed their instructor
really liked to practice slack line. So for my flight review in Avenal yesterday, we did a bunch of slack line corrections. We did them during one tow, but broke the rope. 150' of rope ($12), two schweizer rings ($20), one tost ring ($35), a carabiner (sp?), two half-wiffle balls, and a short section of "weak link" then back-released from the 2-33. It plumeted swiftly into a thankfully barren plowed field below. A few tows later, we mentioned to the tug pilot we were gonna try slack line again. He wised up and took off the weak link assembly ($68) leaving just wiffle and a $10 schweizer ring. After a dozen more slack rope practice tries, we broke that rope. The ring and 10' of rope back released and plumetted into another (thank god) barren field. I'm sure some tractor pulling a tiller will grind some metal at some point and we may get them back. I thought about slack line. The real problem isn't too much pulling, it's the "snappiness" with which the slack line comes out. It strikes me that on low tow, as slack line pulls out, it allows a lot softer recovery. When slack comes out, the tail of the towplane is pulled low, giving some dampening. Next the towplane slows a little from the drag, also good. On high tow, neither of these is true. Sure, sure, I've read very careful use of spoilers and yawing the sailplane away from the slack are tried and true methods. However, even using these, there is still some point there is so much slack you are going to break the rope no matter what. A friend mentioned during his first flight to try to get in wave, he with the experienced instructor broke three ropes before succeeding. My question is to those who have towed through rotor. Have any of you tried low tow and high tow and would care to tell us if you've found a difference in the number of rope breaks? How about the idea of towing low and to the left of the tug? Ignore for the moment that it would annoy the tug driver to do this on purpose (except maybe if torque and p-factor now meant he could just leave the rudders to flop about). Also ignore for the moment it is drag inefficient. Would this reduce the possibility of slack line and/or improve recovery chances even more? How about other dangers? If the rope breaks on low tow how would you feel about having it fly over/around top of the wing/elevator/rudder? Anyone have this happen? I'm especially interested in the experiences of wave pilots and those towing through super heavy thermals... but armchair analysis is also invited :-] |
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