Texas Tragedy Info?

Le mercredi 11 juillet 2012 22:58:22 UTC+2, Bob Kuykendall a écrit*:
......
: As the tow plane and glider accelerated down the runway several
: witnesses noticed that the tail dolly remained attached to the
glider.
: The witnesses immediately advised the glider operations dispatcher,
: who in turn made the radio call “abort, abort, abort”.
.....
Feel free to disagree, but I think that a better approach might have
been to tell the pilot exactly what is known:
Thanks, Bob K.

We had a similar tail dolly incident some years ago at my club: take-off with the (modified, heavy) tail dolly on a Twin Astir. It turned into an accident when an instructor on the ground noticed this during take-off and radioed to abort. Unfortunately, the pilot did release when already flying and almost at the end of the runway. The sailplane went straight into the opposite bank of the large ditch surrounding the airfield. Result: one pilot seriously wounded, one passenger lightly wounded, the Twin total loss.

Some years before - we had no radio then -, I did fly that sailplane myself with the same tail dolly on (shame on me!), and I never noticed anything out of the ordinary. So I agree: by all means inform the pilot about what is happening, but wait until he has enough altitude to fly the airplane and check the controllability first. A few meters above the ground, you have no options left...