Antoine,
I'm not agree with that. I find you're more obsessive to criticize other releases.
I REALLY DO appreciate your efforts to look for every possible way to improve things and make them bulletproof. That's EXACTLY what brought you to my attention and prompted me to rescue you from the Davis and Jack cults. And I welcome with open arms any honest and intelligent criticisms of ANY equipment - including/especially mine. That's what I do.
The trick is not so hard to do (with my setup anyway). Look...
Sorry, so far I have been unable to get that clip to play.
I'm not confortable...
coMfortable
...to propose this release to everybody with this possible event.
And I'm also a HUGE fan of making everything idiot proof - IF it can be done so without adding a lot of weight, drag, expense, undue complexity, whatever.
A distracted pilot should not be punished in this way
A distracted pilot isn't much more likely to make this mistake than he is to insert a batten in the sail backwards.
A total idiot might do it but a total idiot probably shouldn't be flying hang gliders 'cause there are a few thousand better and easier ways he's going to have to kill himself.
There is no record of anyone accidentally doing this.
There IS a record - from Ridgely - of a student pilot hooking his harness carabiner into his Wichard spinnaker shackle. But I don't see anyone making any effort to idiotproof that chink in the armor.
There's no reason not to have releases at BOTH shoulders. And then you're going to have to screw up TWO releases for one point or secondary.
With respect to two point operation... With a proper primary release, primary bridle, and secondary weak link system you should never have to go to a secondary release.
A PILOT is SUPPOSED to PREFLIGHT his equipment once in a while.
About 99.95 percent of the time a failure like this is going to be an issue only at a safe altitude - and nobody who makes this mistake more than once deserves to live anyway.
There should be people who know what they're doing on the ground looking things over once in a while.
Even if someone goes up with the primary and two secondaries locked the chances of him getting hurt on that single flight are microscopic.
What REALLY scares me about the barrel release is that it can be pulled open by contact with the basetube. I've toyed with the idea of a safety mechanism but the data doesn't indicate that this is a problem worth worrying about.
it seems to me still essential
In 1994 I attended an instructor certification clinic with Mike Robertson. He emphasized that we should NEVER tell students what NOT to do because if you did you could bet the farm that they'd do it. From some unpleasant experiences I had had:
with students on the dunes; and
a student of someone else's with whom I was working on a training hill who was seriously injured right after I had spent five minutes telling him how not to fly into a gully off to the side of the landing area
a lightbulb came on and I knew this to be absolutely true.
It was a really bad idea for me to put up a photo of a nonexistent problem and indicate that it really exists and teach people how to make it happen.
Also, when you're trying to teach kids learning to drive to buckle seat belts you don't show them the photo of the kid who wasn't wearing one and was thrown safely clear of the car before it went over the cliff and burst into flames alongside of the photo of the one who was buckled in and smashed and burned to a crisp.
did you find a way to prevent this...
When you flip the pin back (wrong) the tip of the pin ends up farther aft than it does when you rotate it back (right).
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aerotowrelease/8306240203/
If you install a Stop - the length of clear vinyl tubing - aft of the barrel, you can set it to make it extremely difficult, but not, for the truly dedicated idiot, impossible to flip the pin through the Bridle Link eye and close the barrel over it.
However, the Dacron leechline Barrel Release Base stretches and "creeps" (retains a memory of the stretch before relaxing back down to its ambient length) so you really can't get a good, accurate, consistent adjustment for the Stop position.
And if you get the Stop a wee bit too fore it can prevent the barrel from clearing the pin tip in a slack line situation.
And after jumping through all the miserable hoops I had to I finally asked myself why I was making the release more complicated, tedious to construct, and potentially dangerous to theoretically help Adam Elchin keep more of his fellow morons from killing themselves.
Make the goddam release safer for the intelligent people and more dangerous for the idiots - win/win. Not the other way around.
And what's ACTUALLY the ONLY thing that's crashing gliders on launch at Ridgely is the 130 pound Greenspot all those stupid motherfuckers are forcing everyone to use.
So how 'bout we start addressing REAL problems - like the weak links; Wallaby, Lookout, and bent pin releases; and mentally defective tug drivers - before we start jumping through hoops with the imaginary stuff? (I'm talking to them - not you.)
I'd like to know if hanging the upper part of the bridle on the keel or on the carabiner make a difference on overcontrolling "moderation" ?
In one point (pilot only) towing...
- All of the tow force is being routed through the pilot and he thus effectively weighs more and will have more control authority than he may be used to.
- And he will be pulled forward of proper position with respect to the control frame so when he stuffs the bar the bar won't really be stuffed.
In two point (pilot and glider) towing with the upper anchor point positioned on the keel so that the glider tows at trim...
- Only half the tow force is routed through the pilot so he has less control authority but it's closer to what he's used to in free flight.
- And he's positioned fairly normally with respect to the control frame so he's got something close to the full speed range for which the glider was certified.
Think of the one point / two point thing as a continuum.
Start off with the properly trimmed two point glider with the anchor point on the keel (call it) a foot forward of the hang of the hang point.
As you move the (upper) anchor point aft on the keel, to the hang point, and down the suspension to the carabiner the towing starts taking on more of the characteristics of one point.
Continue down from the carabiner and to the pilot and the towing grades into ACTUAL one point.
(And the higher the performance of the glider the lesser are the downsides of towing on point.)
european history
I wasn't thinking anymore...
WHY? Do people start out this stupid or is there something about hang gliding that almost always does massive and - in most cases - irreversible brain damage the moment they first clip in?
...and my weaklink was also around the tow rope.
Hang Gliding - 1997/02
Tad Eareckson
To further address the danger of a primary release failure (bridle wrap), a secondary weak link, of strength somewhere between significantly stronger than and double that of the primary, should be installed at the other end of the primary bridle.
(of course it has to be on the glider)
No. It doesn't. It can be a Tost weak link on the end of the towline.
The purpose of the weak link is not to blow the tow whenever things become inconvenient - it's to keep the plane from getting broken apart in the air.
Because the system hasn't a back up...
Why not?
Does that mean STILL?
Oops...
Towing Aloft - 1998/01
One form of two-point bridle arrangement also known as a V-bridle is shown in figure 7-12. Here a short shoulder line attaches to the pilot's harness shoulder straps. This line should be 2 to 4 feet long and may be fastened by using quick links or tying the lines to the shoulder straps as shown in the figure. Some harnesses have towing loops sewn in the appropriate place for an attachment and such loops should be ordered when purchasing a new harness if you expect to aerotow. We highly recommend employing a secondary release at this point as shown in the figure.
It's just HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. It's not like this should be mandatory or anything. I mean you did NINE YEARS and FIFTEEN HUNDRED TOWS before you had to hit the silk. Carry on.
...the tug started to dive and we tumled.
What was preventing the tug from releasing?
Just out of curiosity... Was there a weak link on the front end?
We landed all safe on a parachute
What about the tug? I'm assuming separation was achieved during the tumble? How?
Any lessons learned?
Thanks much for that little gem - I'll treasure it all my remaining days.
Zack,
I tried it on the releases Tad provided me and I can't do it.
You got in before me.
Yeah, I like to have things idiot proof and the Stops can/do work fairly well. But the official purpose of the Stop is to keep the aft material from getting chewed up by a hard pull and I don't advertise it otherwise. Just consider the idiotproofing as a serendipitous byproduct.
