Bad couple days in Europe

On Sunday, March 24, 2019 at 4:57:27 PM UTC-7, wrote:
Two dead. DG-800 in Spain. Lak Mini FES in Germany.
Both during takeoff/launch.

I emailed Vytas Marcuilis, the Director of the LAK Factory in Lithuania where the MiniLAK that crashed was built. Vytas is a friend of mine and so I asked him for information about the accident. This is what he wrote:

[I do not know details of the accident.
The pilot flew 5-6 days as self launcher and everything went well.
He decided to take the winch after a long break.
Up to the evidence, he pulled too much and fell over the wing...
The investigation is going on and we are looking forward to see the results..

The mini was tested on winch with different C of G positions and it passed all tests according to the EASA Certification requirements. Hundreds of flights have been done on the glider which crashed as it was our dealer's demonstrator in Germany...]

From the description and my own limited experience with winch launching, it sounds like the pilot rotated before he had achieved a safe airspeed in level flight (about 50 knots). A rotation below a safe speed could easily result in an abrupt nose-up stall followed by a fatal spin. Typically, rotation begins at about fifty feet or so AGL Not much chance for recovery. A similar fatal winch accident occurred at Jacoumba airport east of San Diego a year or so ago. The pilot and his passenger were killed.

For those of us invested in the MiniLAK and the FES system, the takeaway from this sad accident appears to be that the glider was not in self-launch FES mode when the accident occurred. A winch accident of this kind could happen to any glider. Undoubtedly, more information will be forthcoming.

Matt Herron