Tost brake bolt shears off

I had my Nimbus drum brake reworked by Vintage Brake and, so far, it stops
the glider fine. However, I had a brake cable fail four flights ago. After
coasting to a stop I crawled under the wing with close-up glasses and found
a frayed cable end with the swaged thingie missing.

As a stopgap, since the Salida camp was coming up, I swaged another end on
the frayed cable and it works OK - so far. I searched for replacement cable
parts and found them at a motorcycle rebuilding shop. I'll need to braze
on a cable termination for the stick brake grip and swage on a solid ball at
the brake lever but it should be an easy project.

Lesson: There's lots of ways for a brake to fail. "Don't aim at anything you
want to keep".

Bill Daniels


"Bob Backer" wrote in message
...
I must say that I almost agree. I have had 4 gliders. My Astir CS had a
tost brake that was bad. My ASW17 had a tost brake that was a bad joke
considering the mass of the 17. My ASW22 had a disc brake that worked
pretty well after bleeding but it just did not like to stay bled.
Amazingly, the tost drum brake on my Ventus C works like a champ. I can
put the glider on its nose if I want.

Chris Reed wrote:
My open Cirrus (1968, probably 400kg with me on board) has the 400 x 4
wheel and Tost brake.

The main purpose of the brake is to stop the glider overrunning the
aerotow rope in the Up slack/All out transition.

It also makes a scraping noise if I use it after landing.

I've never yet met a reliable glider wheel brake. I suspect the worst
kind are those which work *almost* all the time (K21 comes to mind)
because then you might get into the habit of pointing the glider at
expensive objects!

Bruce wrote:
Anyone who relies on the ineffectual brake fitted to most older gliders
is an optimist of note.

On the 4.00 X 4 hub common to these aircraft you have a couple of square
centimetres of friction material, with non energising shoes trying to
stop around 300 - 350kg of glider moving at anything up to 100km/h. Most
are good for one retardation only, at best, then they fade severely.

In my experience, with a lot of fettling work one can achieve a brake
that is reliably weak - which is a whole lot better than the
alternative. But experience indicates that one should still discount it
ever working effectively in an emergency.

You would be distressed to see how much damage you can cause at walking
speed with a 15m single seater. Just think what a 26m+ motorised uber
bug smasher could do with all it's inertia. (although they tend to have
halfway decent disk brakes these days)

In any case the man has it right - Don't point your glider at anything
you intend to keep, especially on a downhill. There is no need to
provoke Murphy.

Mike Schumann wrote:
"never point the plane at anything valuable whilst expecting this brake
to stop it..."??????????
snip