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Glider - Towplane Signals
Training manuals and,in the USA, the FAA test, require knowledge of all
the in-air signals between a glider and towplane. In all my 25-years of aerotows, I've only had four go bad (less than 1%). In one, the towplane engine quit just after liftoff, but early enough to enable us both to land on remaining runway ahead of us. I've had one spoiler deployment, which I spotted and corrected as soon as I realized my ship felt unresponsive and we weren't climbing! I've had two tows where the towplane slowed to the point where I lost aerodynamic control and I had to release to recover. In one of the latter, I was in low tow and even a radio call couldn't speed the towplane up quickly enough. In the second (and more recent) I was in a two-seater without a radio and quickly sank from high tow to low tow, possibly out of sight of the towplane pilot's mirror view. I didn't have enough control to wag anything and my only recovery method was to release. In all my four aerotow incidents neither pilot had time to signal the other. I can see the need for towplane - glider signals (spoilers open and release now) but how useful are signals from the glider to the towplane? In particular, I really wonder if signals to increase/decrease speed, while useful for winch or ground launch, are actually useless in real aerotow situations? I feel much more comfortable where both towplane and glider have working radios (although I was one of the victims at a regional contest when a glider on tow called "towplane slow down 5 knots" and all five of them in the air did so simultaneously!) And with all the emphasis on rope-break training, I've never had one! Comments, anecdotes? Mike ASW 20 WA |
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