Kite Strings

http://www.kitestrings.org/viewtopic.php?p=10111#p10111

Steve Davy wrote:I had a five hundred pound weak link connecting my release to the tow line, and my hook knife was 438 miles away from me at home.

What was your release?

You're consistently way better at analyzing these tangled messes of crappy photos and stills than I'll ever be. I tend to get locked into false assumptions early in the game and then go totally blind to the conflicting stuff on my screen in front of me.

One reasonably competent individual tends to really suck in comparison to a team of several reasonably competent individuals - all motivated to seek the truth. And we are stretched SO thin here. But we're pretty much all this sport's got.

And remember when u$hPa backed Jim Keen-Intellect Rooney as Hang Gliding's God Above All Others? Donnell Hewett's Infallible Weak Link and Hang Gliding's Infallible Opinion Expert on Everything - both now on the trash heap of aviation history.

And Bob, for similar reasons, won't end up much better.
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http://ozreport.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=55649
High Resolution versions

Tormod Helgesen - 2018/04/05 05:02:13 UTC

Bad pre-flight check. Complacency?

Yeah Tormod...

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Look how far out of position The Pilot set that starboard cradle! (And yet look how perfectly positioned the port/downhill one is. Go figure.) What a moron! And think how poorly and totally unfairly that reflects on Quest, the Green Swamp comp organizers, the Safety Committee, and the launch crew folk. This motherfucker definitely needs a rating suspension to make him think about doing better preflights and being less complacent / more focused.

http://ozreport.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=55583
Getting caught in the cart by your wheel

Tormod Helgesen - 2018/04/05 04:58:57 UTC

Gerry Grossnegger - 2018/04/04 13:44:00 UTC

If you're still on the cart and you're sure you're up to flying speed, just push out smoothly & strongly and you will lift off.

Better to have the nose a bit low and have to fly it off the cart, than too high and have the cart fly you at the first waft of a breeze, or propwash, or thermal.

Pull in then!

Bullshit. If you set the tail cradle low you CAN'T pull in. You have to fly the entire tow nose high until wave off altitude or disaster strikes - whichever comes first. Do try to pay attention to the common sense stuff that's already been established in these threads.

If you have to reach for the basebar you obviously have a to high angle but a to low nose and you're stuck...

And if you have to reach for an easily reachable release...

The Pilot - 2018/03/29

The glider continued to turn left and I considered my release but felt that with the glider banked as it was, removing my hand from the base tube would accelerate the turn, possibly spinning the glider.

...you're totally fucked.

...pushing out wont work if the tips are pinning the glider down to the cart. Then you have to wait until you lift off with the cart and all. I guess that this must be experienced to believe in but I assure it's very real and frightening: bouncing behind a dust-producing aircraft, arms extended fully and nothing happens until the cart lifts of and WHAM!!

Yeah? So...

http://ozreport.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=27494
The exciting bits

Jim Rooney - 2012/05/28 11:49:58 UTC

Guys
Your questions hold the answers.

What you're writing about and what your seeing are two very different things.
Your theories are what are doing you in.

What you're talking about is coming out of the cart too early and not having enough flying speed.
What you're watching is Davis coming out of the cart at Mach5.
He is absolutely no where near coming out too slow!

I've said it before, I'll say it a million times... a 582 tug is NOT the same thing as a 914.
Using 582 techniques on a 914 will put you in the shit.

All this "hang onto the cart till it's flying" stuff is fine for 582s. It is NOT for 914s.
Why?
In a word... propwash.

I'm not kidding.
It amazes me how people underappreciate the propwash. It's an afterthough... a footnote.
Let me tell ya guys... on a 914, it's the #1 factor when you leave that damn cart.
You SLAM into that propwash.

I'm towing out here in the desert at the moment. Out here, like it or not, you get to see the propwash. You see it in a big way. Even when we're towing on the pavement, you get to see it. It sucks and you know exactly where it is... because it's a big old cloud of dust and rocks. We insist on our passengers wearing glasses because of it (we provide them if they don't have their own).

Crosswinds of course make a huge difference. But again, we see the propwash... it's clear as day. Sometimes we can even steer around it (that's an other topic though).

The reason I make such a big deal about the difference between the 582s and the 914s is because behind a 582, you're still on the ground when you hit the propwash. You're rolling on the cart and you roll right on through it. No big deal.

So when you "wait till you're lifting the cart"... you're WELL BEYOND the propwash.
When you exit at Mach5, it's no big deal.

Now, when you do this behind a 914... it's a huge deal.
As I said, you slam into the prop wash.

And you're wondering why you're breaking weaklinks????
Are you kidding me?

Think about it... you're going a million miles an hour under huge (relatively speaking) line tension as you come blazing out of the cart struggling to "stay down"... as you slam into turbulent air. Hell yes you're going to break weaklinks. That's what they're there for!
You're subjecting them to massive loadings.
(The shock loading a weaklink sees as you hit the propwash is far greater than people appreciate)
That's why we have them... they're doing their job.

...how come your instant hands free release doesn't automatically kick in to increase the safety of the towing operation? Certainly people didn't shift over to those short track record Tad-O-Link things to trade off safety for convenience, did they?

...if your reflexes aren't lightning fast...

Don't they hafta be if you're gonna fly pro toad?

...you're 100 feet up and climbing vertically into a stall.

http://ozreport.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=31052
Poll on weaklinks

Jim Rooney - 2013/03/05 21:40:02 UTC

You're afraid of breaking off with a high AOA? Good... tow with a WEAKER weaklink... you won't be able to achieve a high AOA. Problem solved.

I think I've read somewhere that you should be at trim position on the cart, I'll surely check out that IF I ever aerotow again. Trust no one.

Except, of course, for Jim Keen-Intellect Rooney. He never once uttered a single syllable that didn't hold up like the Great Wall of China to public scrutiny.

Ben Reese - 2018/04/05 05:34:10 UTC

A pilot is pilot in command.

Well yeah, but in aerotowing...

http://www.chgpa.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=3600
Weak link question

Jim Rooney - 2008/11/24 05:18:15 UTC

Well, I'm assuming there was some guff about the tug pilot's right of refusal?
Gee, didn't think we'd have to delve into "pilot in command"... I figured that one's pretty well understood in a flying community.

It's quite simple.
The tug is a certified aircraft... the glider is an unpowered ultralight vehicle. The tug pilot is the pilot in command. You are a passenger. You have the same rights and responsibilities as a skydiver.
It's a bitter pill I'm sure, but there you have it.

BTW, if you think I'm just spouting theory here, I've personally refused to tow a flight park owner over this very issue. I didn't want to clash, but I wasn't towing him. Yup, he wanted to tow with a doubled up weaklink. He eventually towed (behind me) with a single and sorry to disappoint any drama mongers, we're still friends. And lone gun crazy Rooney? Ten other tow pilots turned him down that day for the same reason.

http://ozreport.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=30971
Zach Marzec

Jim Rooney - 2013/02/16 05:05:41 UTC

Here's a little bit of bitter reality that ya'll get to understand straight off. I won't be sugar coating it, sorry.
You see, I'm on the other end of that rope.
I want neither a dead pilot on my hands or one trying to kill me.
And yes. It is my call. PERIOD.
On tow, I am the PIC.

Now, that cuts hard against every fiber of every HG pilot on the planet and I get that.
Absolutely no HG pilot likes hearing it. Not me, not no one. BUT... sorry, that's the way it is.
Accept it and move on.
Not only can you not change it, it's the law... in the very literal sense.

...that's the guy on the Dragonfly - in this case Evgeniya Laritskaya. Right Ben? And all you other useless pieces of shit who let that vile parasite get away with proclamations like that for around a dozen years.

Command of your gear, even that gear your being loaned.

Or mandated by corrupt shit merchants like Davis Straub.

Inspect and understand everything used.

And then fly it anyway - despite all the obvious totally needless stupid fatalities it's racked up in the course of establishing its extremely wrong track record.

Imagine you ask someone to do something and it is wrong.

Why don't you just go with Davis, the Flight Park Mafia, Mark G. Forbes, u$hPa, their enablers? None of those motherfuckers have to IMAGINE shit. They don't even know how to NOT ask thousands of flyers to do stupid lethal shit. DEMAND - in fact. Note the recent example of Mark telling us he won't ever fly in the conditions PG Three candidates are REQUIRED to.

Who is at fault??

You are, even if they fail to do what you asked them to do.

So where were you when Team Kite Strings was demolishing Jim Keen-Intellect Rooney to the point that nobody even remembers him having been in and around these sports?

You are responsible to preflight inspect, no exceptions.

You don't need to load test it or anything because, with our backgrounds in formal research, you and I both know that lab tests may produce results with good internal validity, but are often weak in regard to external validity - meaning lab conditions cannot completely include all the factors and variability that exists in the big, real world. You just need to preflight it to make sure it isn't bent any more than it was when it went up on the previous flight.

Asshole.

Gerry Grossnegger - 2018/04/05 06:05:13 UTC

I like to be at a flying-fast position on the cart, when hanging hands-off of course. Nothing worse than floating off the cart at just above stall speed, leaving those nice big wheels behind...

What's the problem? You perfected your flare timing halfway to your Two. So what could you POSSIBLY need with wheels? Wheel landings are for GIRLS!

...and getting slammed down by the sink sucked in behind the hot thermal that the tug kicked up into your face.

Bullshit. This stuff doesn't happen in real life. I should know. I've read the excellent book, Towing Aloft, by Dennis Pagen and Bill Bryden - and there's nothing remotely like that anywhere in any of its pages.

I've been stuck on carts, several times. Let go of the hold-downs, and nothing happens, except that you're bouncing along the ground and likely to get pulled off the cart forwards, in a dive because your tail is being held too high, and only a foot or so off the ground. If you're lucky, you have wheels and the ground is smooth enough for them to roll at that speed.

Right Gerry. It's a matter of LUCK whether or not you elect to fly with grass-runway-strip-adequate wheels. Also, of course, the pitch adjustment you made on the dolly when you plopped your glider onto it.

You out-mass the glider by a couple of times.

But it's about the same ratio for everyone. So, obviously...

http://ozreport.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=31052
Poll on weaklinks

Jim Rooney - 2013/03/04 19:31:36 UTC

We all play by the same rules, or we don't play.

...we should all be using a single loop of the same precision fishing line as the focal point of our safe towing system.

Push out fast, and the glider will pivot on the keel support and the whole thing will go up, and the nose angle will increase, and off you go, pulling in again immediately of course.

I wouldn't know. I've never been fucking stupid enough to start a tow with my glider dangerously out of trim. And I wonder if you are that STUPID - and you've just told us you are - how the fuck you manage to pull off mountain, ramp, cliff launches where the airflow tends to be irregularly angled and powered up and you have to adjust the pitch manually as you commit, run, start flying with your hands on the downtubes until you're fairly solidly airborne.

Tormod Helgesen - 2018/04/05 07:30:52 UTC

Nothing worse than floating off the cart at just above stall speed...

Agree. That's why you pull in and hold on to the cart until it it's of the ground.

- Gerry hasn't figured out how to do that yet. Most of his time and energy is dedicated to sucking Davis's dick.

- Until it's of the ground.... Like this:

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you mean?

Everybody catch what's going on with the culture at this phase of degeneration? For decades starting with Skyting Theory the only way to abort a dangerous tow was to have a one G or under break to keep you from getting into too much trouble.

Then we had Zack Marzec fail to handle the inconvenience adequately a bit over five years ago and people suddenly became happy with Tad-O-Links that NEVER broke before you could get into too much trouble and there was an unspoken commandment to never again mention weak links. Anything that happens between a glider and whatever's pulling it is now a "LINE BREAK".

And now there is NO POSSIBLE WAY to abort a tow in ANY emergency situation. Now it's entirely about how to not ever get into any emergency situation. And in the excellent book, Towing Aloft, by Dennis Pagen and Bill Bryden of 1998/01 there was no such thing as an emergency situation on tow.

This Quest / Green Swamp / Westmoreland / Evgeniy clusterfuck is another major historic milestone.

P.S. Jim Keen-Intellect Rooney's logged on at The Davis Show again at this time of posting.

Then we had Zack Marzec fail to handle the inconvenience adequately a bit over five years ago and people suddenly became happy with Tad-O-Links that NEVER broke before you could get into too much trouble and there was an unspoken commandment to never again mention weak links. Anything that happens between a glider and whatever's pulling it is now a "LINE BREAK".

And now there is NO POSSIBLE WAY to abort a tow in ANY emergency situation. Now it's entirely about how to not ever get into any emergency situation.

Exactly. Case in point...

Push out fast, and the glider will pivot on the keel support and the whole thing will go up, and the nose angle will increase, and off you go, pulling in again immediately of course.

used to describe how to actuate a hands-free release.

'Cept it was considered extremely poor form to say anything about pulling in again immediately of course. You just...

http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=14230
pro tow set-up

Ryan Voight - 2009/11/02 23:55:05 UTC

Ummm... If you're holding that much pitch pressure, popping the weaklink and flying away should be easy as blaming a fart on the dog

Ryan Voight - 2009/11/03 05:24:31 UTC

It works best in a lockout situation... if you're banked away from the tug and have the bar back by your belly button... let it out. Glider will pitch up, break weaklink, and you fly away.

During a "normal" tow you could always turn away from the tug and push out to break the weaklink... but why would you?

Have you never pondered what you would do in a situation where you CAN'T LET GO to release? I'd purposefully break the weaklink, as described above. Instant hands free release

Jim Rooney - 2009/11/03 06:16:56 UTC

Please do not think for an instant that that thing isn't going to let go. It's going to snap so fast that you won't realize what happened till after it's happened.

As for being in a situation where you can't or don't want to let go, Ryan's got the right idea. They're called "weak" links for a reason. Overload that puppy and you bet your ass it's going to break.

You can tell me till you're blue in the face about situations where it theoretically won't let go or you can drone on and on about how "weaklinks only protect the glider" (which is BS btw)... and I can tell ya... I could give a crap, cuz just pitch out abruptly and that little piece of string doesn't have a chance in hell. Take your theory and shove it... I'm saving my a$$.

...flew away - easy as blaming a fart on the dog.

For an inadvertent weak link break in turbulence you needed to have been properly trained - via tandem instruction - on how to properly react. But nobody ever told you what the proper training and reaction was. ('Cause nobody ever wanted to reveal in print that they were making you pay for two hundred dollar tandem rides to teach you to pull the bar back after they squeezed the easily reachable velcroed-on bicycle brake lever in smooth air at two thousand feet.)

But now when you use the EXACT SAME moronic technique for blowing out of a pinned-tail-high-in-the-launch-cart situation - using a Tad-O-Link and with zero possibility of anything blowing to increase the safety of the towing operation, a Birrenator kicking in, the tug driver fixing whatever's going on back there by giving you the rope - you need to pull in again immediately of course.

Is this a great sport or what!

The situation of how the keel broke is probably one of the least important issues and most likely had little to no impact on the passenger's injuries.

No. I realized subsequent to my previous post how historically major and TOTALLY FUCKING GOLDEN this is.
- Quest - where they've been involved in perfecting aerotowing nearly 27 years
- Green Swamp Klassic:
-- Safety Committee
-- launch marshals - on film
-- minimum of five fully qualified tuggies operating:
--- Bobby Fucking-Genius Bailey
--- Russell Brown
--- Jonny Thompson
--- Jim Prahl
--- Evgeniya Laritskaya
-- heavy traffic
-- normal XC thermal conditions
-- zero other incidents of the slightest significance reported for the week
- pristine looking advanced intermediate (and finned) HGMA certified Wills Wing (U2) glider
- fully qualified comp pilot - possible KHK professional AT instructor
- appropriate bridle and appropriate weak link on the glider
- appropriate tow mast breakaway protector on purpose designed Bailey-Moyes 914 Dragonfly
- 2018 state of the art launch dolly

Glider towed to the point of catastrophic structural failure ON THE LAUNCH CART with no documentation of ANYONE having done ANYTHING the SLIGHTEST BIT WRONG.

Jim Keen-Intellect Rooney lurking but saying NOTHING.

The Pilot agrees to sharing information with USHPA safety coordinator for the purpose of improving safety in the sport of hang gliding and two years from now we will have still heard ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.

We've never in the history of modern towing - certified gliders, though-the-pilot hookup - had a towed preflighted/airworthy glider experience a structural failure in any conditions in the air. Kelly Harrison's was OK while it was being pile driven 390 feet straight down by the tow truck via a snag on the port wheel extension. Zack Marzec's was still in pretty good shape after tumbling twice from 150 feet and fatally impacting the runway. And now Quest has managed to demolish one on the cart with a legally qualified driver well before the Dragonfly gets airborne. (And we know who the driver was.)

This one's a major game changer. The more these assholes pull this shit the more they restrict themselves in the superior proclamations they're able to get away with. They just keep painting themselves into more and more corners. And the sport's in such massive freefall mode now that there wouldn't have been a goddam thing they could've done about if they'd come totally clean and started recognizing legitimate aeronautical theory several years ago.

And I just delight in knowing how much agony Jim Keen-Intellect Rooney is in now as a consequence of no longer being able to tell all us stupid muppets how sick and tired he is of trying to get us all properly in sync with all of his opinions - while he silently lurks on the forum he used to own.

And still total silence on this one over at The worlds largest hang gliding community. Largest and totally irrelevant.
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P.S. - 2018/04/05 21:40:00 UTC

Just did a Google search for:

"The worlds largest hang gliding community."

Did you mean: "The world's largest hang gliding community."

No, thanks Google, but I said exactly what I meant.

I also have to - reluctantly - credit Gerry Grossnegger for catching that pre impact broken keel.

http://ozreport.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=55649
High Resolution versions

Gerry Grossnegger - 2018/04/03 02:45:10 UTC

Could the keel be broken, maybe from the sideways pull on the pilot & hang point while the back end on the keel is still in that (steep-sided, deep) notch in the support? Maybe with the control bar also out-of-square with the dolly?

Likely dynamics too.

But I (too) was overloaded at the time, reacted just the way...

NMERider - 2018/04/03 06:52:07 UTC

The keel appears straight in the second to last photo with all four lower keel wires relatively taut. If it was broken wouldn't there be both slack and tight wires?
Also wouldn't the rear wires being close to the rear cart support take the sideways force?

...Jonathan did, dismissed it, locked onto the false assumption.

Oh well, at least I'm capable of ADMITTING having been wrong - once I realize I have been.

<BS> wrote:http://www.kitestrings.org/viewtopic.php?p=10111#p10111

Steve Davy wrote:I had a five hundred pound weak link connecting my release to the tow line, and my hook knife was 438 miles away from me at home.

What was your release?

Remote barrel. Erich was planning to build some kind of needlessly elaborate thing until I showed him a barrel release. Next day I show up and he had fabricated a barrel by chucking an aircraft bolt in the lathe and boring a hole in it. Also, by leaving some material where the bolt head had been he was able to drill a small hole for the lanyard attachment. I made the base from thousand pound spectra spliced into a continuous loop.

Thanks Steve.

Tad Eareckson wrote:I've gotta also - reluctantly - credit Gerry Grossnegger for catching that pre impact broken keel. Likely dynamics too.

Definitely, that's where it's due.

Oh well, at least I'm capable of ADMITTING having been wrong - once I realize I have been.

An admirable trait.

Not in The Industry at large. Either that or nobody who's anybody has ever been the slightest bit wrong about anything that's mattered in the better part of half a century.

Now... Gotta redo a bit o' stuff with this enlightened understanding of what happened when and why. And of course with zilch help from the Industry motherfucker who's the star of this freak show and has ever so generously agreed, after much internal turmoil, to sharing information USHPA safety coordinator for the purpose of improving safety in the sport of hang gliding - excluding, of course, the two videos.

Speaking of which... It just dawned on me that I hadn't noticed a camera on James/Richard's glider before.

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Click on the full res links and it's clearly visible on the underside of the now broken off aft keel halfway between the trailing edge and fin.

So let's reboot with what we're now all in agreement happened as far as the scraps of info tossed to us by the damage control motherfuckers allow. (Camera's the black thing against the keel aft of / below the tail wires junction in the following shot.)

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First available shot, keel's already been broken earlier in the tow. This is a world hang gliding first and required a lot of lateral torque. The glider with its keel trapped in the U-shaped cradle cutout would have had to have twisted / rotated / yawed to port / counterclockwise with the cart strongly resisting the rotation.

I'm gonna say that the only way this can have happened was that with the low Spencer "Spinner" Kindt plastic control bar cradles...

Davis Straub - 2018/04/02 12:40:08 UTC

I'm going to assume the bottom of the base tube is 1 inch below the top of the cart tubes. Spinner is going to remake these cradles to raise them up above the cart tubes. The pilot's position means that the glider will yaw to the left as it is doing and this will not correct the fact that this tow started with the right wind lifting.

...the fixed forward raked Wills Wing port wheel is jamming the fork to the only castering aft raked front wheel still on the ground and turned it into a fixed aft raked front wheel such that the cart will strongly resist any force to track back towards the clueless accelerating tug and reduce the torque on the glider's airframe. (Really gotta admire the two wheels on the ground are holding the cart on its track sideways from what the tug is doing. Nobody's ever seen anything like it before. (And note how nicely The Pilot - who's not being jammed by anything at this point - is castering.)

The glider's starboard wing would've had to have been lifted almost immediately upon commencement of the launch attempt as otherwise the glider would've quickly trimmed nose down and the keel would've cleared. (Things might not have ended much better however, what with the cart's no longer castering wheel.)

So from this we know that a launch assistant could've easily prevented the roll and that Quest / Green Swamp wasn't bothering to provide launch assistants and was better employing its available personnel making extra sure everyone was using appropriate bridles and weak links. (And we know that James/Richard was using an appropriate bridle and weak link by the severity of the damage and injuries he sustained.)

Great smoking gun shot of the U-cutout that trapped and broke his keel real early in the game:

3


So let's look at some keel cradle implementations from various points around the country and planet...

Quest:
13-05825
http://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5586/14508733764_9dab5a289c_o.png

19-10613
http://c1.staticflickr.com/9/8206/29265101161_b2d4c08cff_o.png

06-03114
http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3728/9655895292_f4f808fb0e_o.png

16-1214
http://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4288/35692240022_b57c1af2ee_o.png

099-081858
http://c1.staticflickr.com/1/937/40764724825_d219c2cd71_o.png

Dunnellon, Florida (Quest):
06-0700
http://c1.staticflickr.com/9/8502/28996306053_8daf5cca06_o.png

Florida Ridge:
03-0403
http://c2.staticflickr.com/2/1628/25214918323_bf15fb4eb1_o.png

Lockout:
06-1126
http://c1.staticflickr.com/9/8561/27814264704_cb518862b4_o.png

Ridgely:
03-02921
http://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5541/13949103241_d3aa2247dd_o.png

Cloud 9:
02-02627
http://c2.staticflickr.com/2/1470/25532108590_c0c76fea68_o.png

Enjoy Airfield, Illinois:
1-02603
http://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4541/38309011766_cb557b6147_o.png

Cowboy Up, Houston:
01
http://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5636/30054526003_87b902f57b_o.jpg

Big Spring:
http://farm1.staticflickr.com/32/35642942_43a5af27ae_o.jpg

Santa Cruz Flats Race:
05-01909
http://c2.staticflickr.com/2/1636/24845749983_9a6b788767_o.png

Buenos Aires:
04-2521
http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5504/14549499153_9abea93c7c_o.png

Plumpton, East Sussex:
03-00409
http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5609/15784286121_2dc4a11767_o.png

Hinterweiler, Germany:
09-02407
http://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5772/30387235852_325db99d4a_o.png

Forbes Flatlands:
http://ozreport.com/pub/images/Jrs_2008.jpg
http://c1.staticflickr.com/3/2845/11896575483_200e79bbe5_o.jpg

Peter Holloway, Victoria:
150-124624
http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3869/14517570033_4301713d3a_o.png


So it looks we have fair representations of both U-cutouts and less restrictive constructions. You've gotta do several things simultaneously just right to induce a catastrophic The Pilot launch crash with the U-cutout but have we ever seen the slightest problem of a glider yawing on the cart that would warrant implementation of what we had in this incident?

I think we have all the yaw restriction we need with well designed control bar cradles and that a shallow V cradle for the keel - which is most of what we seem to be seeing - or reasonable facsimile is the way to go.

And launch carts in general tend to be pretty well designed because they HAVE TO BE. The flight parks will always elect for the crappiest glider/pilot mounted tow equipment imaginable because the emergency situations in which it critically matters only emerge once every ten thousand tows but the dollies come into critical play for EVERY LAUNCH for EVERY GLIDER and they're shared by a dozen pilots each and are in use all day/weekend long.

http://ozreport.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=55649
High Resolution versions

Davis Straub - 2018/04/02 12:40:08 UTC

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The base tube is on the cradle on the left but the wheel is partially below the cart tubes. The cradles are on one of the three carts that have plastic cradles instead of wood. I'm going to assume the the bottom of the base tube is 1 inch below the top of the cart tubes. Spinner is going to remake these cradles to raise them up above the cart tubes.

The base tube is on the cradle on the left but the wheel is partially below the cart tubes.

- Which is where the other wheel was when it was getting hooked up at launch position and everything was loaded up properly. But that wasn't seen as a problem because The Pilot had been checked to make sure he was using an appropriate bridle and weak link.

- It's also jamming the port castering wheel to straight-ahead-only configuration. Care to say anything about that?

The cradles are on one of the three carts that have plastic cradles instead of wood. I'm going to assume the the bottom of the base tube is 1 inch below the top of the cart tubes.

Well yeah. Quest has been involved in perfecting aerotowing nearly 27 years and how can you be involved in perfecting aerotowing if you don't take perfectly good designs and stupidly fuck them up for no reason whatsoever once in a while?

I'm gonna guess that a third of the launches those assholes get off the ground down there involve this ubiquitous wheels configuration. But having a bit of rigid glider construction below and behind a front cart frame element - not to mention in a position at which it WOULD interfere with the castering of the front wheels - couldn't possibly have been viewed as potentially catastrophic.

Spinner...

http://c1.staticflickr.com/1/783/41271969441_917af0a6f1_o.jpg


...who can't be bothered to participate in or respond to any of these discussions...

...is going to remake these cradles to raise them up above the cart tubes.

Correct the stupid mistake he made that got this useless pro toad douchebag seriously crashed and could easily have gotten him quaded...

6
http://c1.staticflickr.com/1/865/26320837657_a2ea7a8803_o.jpg


...or killed. And don't we get to hear how and why he perfected this design in the wrong direction in the first place and how it managed to pass muster with all the other fucking geniuses at Quest constantly involved in perfecting aerotowing?

And how 'bout all the other competitors and regular AT rated pilots who are supposed to be able to ascertain whether or not the equipment they're using is safe and properly configured?

http://ozreport.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=55583
Getting caught in the cart by your wheel

Gerry Grossnegger - 2018/04/05 06:05:13 UTC

Nothing worse than floating off the cart at just above stall speed...

Yeah? How 'bout the inconvenience of having your Standard Aerotow Weak Link...

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-bRrpHNa68iY/UQ6Pv9gRZyI/AAAAAAAAjTg/Hc22bx5122Q/s2048/20943781_BG1.jpg


...increase the safety of the towing operation at the worst possible time, when the glider's climbing hard in a near stall situation?

Tormod Helgesen - 2018/04/05 07:30:52 UTC

Agree. That's why you pull in and hold on to the cart until it it's of the ground.

I don't. I don't need or want to. I know how to get my glider safely airborne without taking the cart halfway down the runway and making retrieval a huge pain in the ass.

Davis Straub - 2018/04/06 12:21:12 UTC

The recommendation here is to pull the cart off the ground behind tugs with 582 2-cyle engines. Don't do that behind 912'sand 914's.

- Who's making the recommendation "HERE" and why isn't it stated on Here's website?

- Why should Here have any recommendations different from any Non Here operation?

- What is Here's recommended weak link strength, material, configuration? They used to define, explain, publicize it. What's happened to warrant the changes we've been able to see in videos from Here?

- Does Here recommend that a 200 pound little girl glider taking off into a straight and steady fifteen mile per hour headwind pull the cart off the ground behind a 582 and a 350 pound glider with a five mile per hour tailwind on a hot muggy summer afternoon leave it on the ground behind a 914?

- What does Here recommend people do to ensure they're coming back in with safe approach speed?

- On 2016/05/21 did Here - knowing that they were pulling pro toads behind 582s in conditions which put them one low easy reach to anything away from certain death - recommend that everyone make extra sure that everything was properly secured before getting on the cart and use staffers to double check?

- Note that Here had been fine launching hundreds of flights with the Wills Wing extended wheels off of these three carts with the dangerously and stupidly low control bar cradles for gawd knows how long.

This is a total load of crap. Anybody who needs to lift the cart to ensure that he's at safe launch airspeed shouldn't have gotten on the cart in the first place.

Davis and Rooney are both power mad sociopaths who get their rocks off degrading legitimate pilots. Davis is just ten times smarter and a hundred times more refined than Rooney ever was or could've hoped to have been - not that either of those is saying much.

Anything that happens between a glider and whatever's pulling it is now a "LINE BREAK".

Unless it's a creative descriptor in lieu of any component names and the term break being used together.

http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?f=17&p=403287#p403287
GSSK 2018 VLOG

...A thermal shook me off tow at 800 feet, but I got up anyway...