Recognizing and reacting to tow plane engine failure

On Thursday, October 23, 2014 10:41:57 AM UTC-4, son_of_flubber wrote:
It would be useful to hear your stories of how incidents of tow plane engine failure turned out for you. It seems that there is very little time to recognize, react, and recover. What are classic mistakes to make in this scenario?

Would it be useful to practice 'release and land to the side of the tow plane path' (and have the tow plane fly a normal departure of course)? Any other recommended training exercises?

In a little over 2,000 launches, I've had 2 actual towplane failures. In both cases, the failure was gradual, with no obvious puff of smoke or stopped prop. The problem signs were a gradual decrease in climb rate until we were barely climbing at all. The obvious difference between just flying through heavy sink (which is not uncommon at a mountain or ridge site) is the change in attitude of the towplane and the obvious need to pitch down to stay behind the now struggling towplane. The most memorable of these was behind an L-19 that was slowly gobbling up a valve during a tow on a bodacious ridge day. My good friend was towing, and he nursed us around the airfield in a close in pattern climbing at barely 100fpm, allowing a safe landing at any point. When he got me to 1,000 feet AGL, he waved me off and brought the sick L-19 in.

FWIW... we practiced exactly this scenario in our instruction program at my old club. We would brief the mission with the towpilot, who would slowly back off the power starting at around 600 feet. I did this with at least a half-dozen students, and with most of them it would go something like this: Student:"Hey, what's the towpilot doing"? Me: "What do you mean"? Student: "We've stopped climbing" Me: "So, what are we going to do about it?" Student: "But he didn't wave me off..." It was pretty eye-opening to think that students might follow the towplane down if the towpilot was too busy to wave him/her off. The post-flight debriefs were usually quite enlightening.

P3