Safety of winch launch vrs. aero tow?

On Wed, 29 Oct 2003 16:48:38 +0100, "Bert Willing"
wrote:

Nothing worse than an additional communication step between pilot and winch
driver. Did that for 10 years in Germany, happy to do it by radio ever since
I left Germany, hadn't had an interference from others on the same
frequencies for the last 13 years :-)

Don't forget that you rarely do 100 launches per day at your current
airfield with "Vent arriere" messages each 3 minutes, interfering with
launches...

(Yes - I'm envious!)

Of course you are correct - it's nice to have a direct connection
between pilot and winch driver.
My club at Landau has never had such a (radio) communication, and we
seldom miss it. Sometimes the Ka-8 gets too fast (and releases early),
but otherwise I cannot remember and disadvantages of not having a
glider-winch connection.
It's more a question of winch driver practice - drivers with little
practice tend to judge the speed wrong and need corrections.

To add some spice - I personally watched two bad winch accidents, each
had to do with power failure of the winch/too low airspeed. In both
cases there was direct radio communication between glider and winch.






Bye
Andreas

To add some spice - I personally watched two bad winch accidents, each
had to do with power failure of the winch/too low airspeed. In both
cases there was direct radio communication between glider and winch.


Of course having radio connection does not mean you can just let the
launch happen. You still have to fly it and react to whatever
situation arises. First, you have to use the radio. Second you have to
use it before it's to late and third and most important: never rely on
the use of radio of having any effect on the launch.
I still fail to understand why any winch or cabel failure should lead
to an accident. With or without radio. With or without wind. With or
without water ballast.
Be prepared.

Marcel

In article ,
says...
I still fail to understand why any winch or cabel failure should lead
to an accident. With or without radio. With or without wind. With or
without water ballast.
Be prepared.

I seem to recall some launches where the cable became tangled in the
main wheel, when the winch jerked the glider forward, then paused very
briefly. This is caused the glider to pitch up too fast at the start,
and the pilot was unable to release, leading to a crash. Perhaps this
is not what you mean by a winch failure?

--
!Replace DECIMAL.POINT in my e-mail address with just a . to reply
directly

Eric Greenwell
Richland, WA (USA)

On Thu, 30 Oct 2003 07:49:51 -0800, Eric Greenwell
wrote:

In article ,
says...
I still fail to understand why any winch or cabel failure should lead
to an accident. With or without radio. With or without wind. With or
without water ballast.
Be prepared.

I seem to recall some launches where the cable became tangled in the
main wheel, when the winch jerked the glider forward, then paused very
briefly. This is caused the glider to pitch up too fast at the start,
and the pilot was unable to release, leading to a crash. Perhaps this
is not what you mean by a winch failure?

That should be a recoverable situation provided that the signalling
channel between launch point and winch can convey three messages:

- take up slack
- all out
- STOP

If, as it appears to be the case at Torrey Pines, the headlamp signals
can't be used to signal STOP then you have an accident waiting to
happen. The launch marshal must ALWAYS be able to signal STOP and be
obeyed without question. Doesn't matter whether the channel is radio,
telephone, coded light flashes or signalling bat provided that it can
transmit those three commands unambiguously.

On the sites where I've winch launched an immediate STOP is signalled
if the glider overruns the cable for any reason. The reason we use the
three phrases listed above (repeated continuously) is that they have
three, two and one syllable and so can be distinguished despite noise
in the winch cab and/or wind noise in the launch marshall's
microphone.

--
martin@ : Martin Gregorie
gregorie : Harlow, UK
demon :
co : Zappa fan & glider pilot
uk :

On 29 Oct 2003 23:17:50 -0800, (Marcel
Duenner) wrote:


I still fail to understand why any winch or cabel failure should lead
to an accident. With or without radio. With or without wind. With or
without water ballast.
Be prepared.

100% agree.

I sometimes get the impression that in case of a glider-winch radio
connection the glider pilot tends to rely on his radio commands
("faster" - "slower") to correct a sub-optimum situation. Which
obviously not works in all cases and then might lead to an even worse
situation.

In case of no glider-winch connection the glider pilot completely
relies on himself and takes the according action if a certain
parameter (e-g. speed) exceeds the (his) limits.
Bye
Andreas