Keep your hand off the release handle during aero tows!

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.

Derek Copeland

At 09:29 11 October 2013, John Galloway wrote:
At 06:31 11 October 2013, Del Copeland wrote:
One of the reasons the UK historically had a poor winch
launching safety record was that we copied German methods.
In
particular, when we first had powerful German Tost winches
we
were told to start with the stick hard back to contain the
speed.
This led to a number of (usually fatal) flick spin accidents, so
we
realised that this was not a good idea, as have the Germans.
We
now start with the stick forward of centre and control the
rotation rate, and haven't had a flick spin accident for several
years.


Del, when you say "we copied the German methods etc" - who
is
the "we"? It was 1969 that I first trained and soloed on the
winch
in the UK and I have never personally encountered instruction
to
start a winch launch with the stick hard back to contain the
speed.

John Galloway