Aerotow ropes: short or long, breakable or unbreakable?

Tow ropes do break, but in my experience it’s pretty rare. I’ve been soaring for only 8 years, primarily off of grass fields, and out of about 20,000 tows that have occurred during that time at the two sites I’ve flown from, I know of only 6 rope breaks. Four of those breaks occurred above 2,000 feet AGL, during slack line removal practice. One break occurred above 1,000 feet AGL, when a glider got high and upset the tow plane. One break occurred at about 10 feet AGL, when the tow rope came apart in its middle via unraveling.

The first four breaks don’t really bother me at all. The fifth break bothered a whole bunch of us, but not from a tow rope standpoint! The sixth break was initially disturbing, but we quickly discovered that a poorly manufactured batch of rope had been imported into the country (the substandard nature of the rope was pretty obvious simply by running the line through your hand).

Most of our tow rope wear occurs where the line is wrapped twice through the round part of the Tost ring. Pilots and line men see this area “growing hair” at the inspection done just before hook-up, and a worn tow rope gets rejected quickly. Our line men use a short stick with a metal hook in its end to guide the rope as the tow plane taxis into take off position. The feel of the rope going through this hook is a virtual mini-inspection, and has resulted in our finding knots as well as rope damage caused by trees and rocks.

-John, Q3