FLPHG Wheel-Launch

[<BS>]

...but few if any come equipped with a kill switch that you don't have to reach for.

I would THINK that as long as you could instantly drop the power down to idle the reach free kill switch wouldn't be that big of a fuckin' deal.

I could be wrong and maybe more have developed over the last couple of years. For example the Doodle Bug has a mouth throttle yet the kill switch is located on the harness frame located about hip level if standing or at the end of an arm rest if seated.

Sounds like something I could live with - although I'm open to worst case scenario discussion.

I agree. I think there have been cases where the throttle got stuck wide open.

[<BS>]

Frank's story is a sad one.

[Tad Eareckson]

Aerotow Industry people are...

http://ozreport.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=24846
Is this a joke ?

Jim Rooney - 2011/08/26 17:34:33 UTC

Have we considered straight pin releases?
Yes.
I'm mostly fine with them... as I've said many times in the past by the way.
Do be aware that they have their issues as well. In contrast to his holliness's assertions, they can jam. I've had one do so, so he can get stuffed, he's wrong. It has to do with how they're built, specifically, the line on the pilot end crunches up cuz it's too tight of a tolerance for the small barrel that's necessary to use with a straight pin.
My point is that everything has issues. Everything. Period.
Will I fly with a straight pin release? Sure.
Does it have the track record of the curved pins? No.
Does it have limitations that the curved pins don't? Yes, yes it does.
Do they matter? Depends on your situation.
Try fitting a straight pin release with anything but weaklink. (it doesn't quite fit the same) OH! Right. Just might be that we've thought of that eh?

...SCUM. They either ARE egomaniacal totally incompetent lying morons like Jim Keen-Intellect Rooney or tolerate them amongst their ranks.

We give them total solid equipment that NEVER fails in the air and they either find some way to sabotage it on the ground or, failing that, just pronounce that it WILL fail.

Then they go to Stage Two. Because you're using equipment for which there's a one hundred percent CERTAINTY of failure at some point in your flying career it's ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL that you use one of our magic loops of fishing line, which has an extremely high probability of dumping you into a dangerous stall every single time you fly in thermal conditions, because it MIGHT break at JUST THE RIGHT TIME *WHEN* your release fails - which, obviously, will be in a critical life or death situation.

And people buy that crap and incorporate it into their mindsets - ignoring the arithmetic that shows that:

- Even if a release has a mandatory failure rate of five percent the chances of having:

-- a failure line up with a critical situation in which the failure will make a difference are about the same as the ones for getting disemboweled in the setup area by an escaped circus tiger

-- this previous situation defused by a perfectly timed magic fishing line break are about the same as the ones for getting vaporized by a stray death ray blast from a dogfight between the runway and the moon in an interstellar conflict between a couple of our neighboring solar systems

- A glider that flies with magic fishing line that requires two launches for every successful climb to workable altitude is a hundred times as likely to get significantly crashed as a glider that flies with its primary release welded shut and no fishing line at all.

- Magic fishing line WILL ELIMINATE from your career many of the best hours and days of flying you'd have otherwise experienced over the course of your career.

Sorry. I got started. But the main point of this was/is:

I think there have been cases where the throttle got stuck wide open.

Even if you experience that equipment malfunction with no kill switch available ANYWHERE, no means of shutting down or even slowing the engine, when's it gonna matter? 99.99 percent of the time you're gonna be able to just point the nose up and wait until you run outta gas.

In the incident with the idiot on the Soarmaster to make things exciting he had to:
- use a dangerous throttle control installation AND
- use a dangerous kill switch installation AND
- fail to balance the prop AND
- lose a blade

And, fuck, he STILL puts the plane down softly with no feathers rearranged.

So if we can do the engineering with tons of optimization and redundancy without significant tradeoffs in weight, drag, cost, compromises affecting other considerations (which we can EASILY do in glider aerotow configurations - and HAVE, in fact, done) go for it. But if there's some problem backing up a both-hands-on-the-basetube throttle control with a both-hands-on-the-basetube kill switch then we've got better things to worry about than the downside of just having the kill switch within an easy one handed swat on the harness somewhere.

Frank's story is a sad one.

Yep. For a few hundred dollars worth of design, parts, fabrication for a one-off assembly he could've squeezed a button velcroed to a finger and aborted the tow without so much as a slight increase in pulse rate. Would've been a total nonevent. Then we could've made copies for a couple hundred bucks a pop and this guy:

022-04610
http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2809/13746340634_a74b33d285_o.png


http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3708/13746233274_c1a80f35c1_o.png
088-05301

wouldn't have had his life destroyed.

But instead Santos used some cheap useless whatever and a two second window opened and closed forever. Devastating effects on the family, end of Santos's long career in hang gliding and the beginning of a remainder of a life with that permanently on his conscience.

But what's indescribably infuriating is that after Steve Kinsley and I racked our brains, engineered the hell out of several solutions that WOULD have made that a nonevent, put stuff in the air, offered the technology and all the help anyone might want for free the Ridgely, Manquin, Quest, Davis, Lookout caliber pigfuckers who run this show just pissed all over us and our work.

If I got dropped on some rock in the Pacific with some of these pieces of shit I'd do everything within my power to make Lord of the Flies look like one of the lighter episodes of Gilligan's Island.

[<BS>]

Even if you experience that equipment malfunction with no kill switch available ANYWHERE, no means of shutting down or even slowing the engine, when's it gonna matter?

On launch. They're not known for having abundant power, and require a pilot to lean through the control frame and keep the nose down, similar to a flat slope launch. The mistakes show up more on no wind launches. The pilot doesn't gain enough speed and may even push out, the glider rolls and oh shit.

[Tad Eareckson]

Yeah, it's damn near always way better to be not flying then just barely flying - except, of course, in aerotowing in which being able to just barely fly...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlIGsgNFRWM


...is the only barrier standing between us and certain and instant death for both glider and tug. But...

Druthers aside there's a lot of aviation in which when the decision to go is made there's no option to not go. Shuttle, JATO, carrier, ramp, cliff, slot launches, passenger jet takeoffs for the most part. I'd take I hop on a powered harness that I was certain would be stuck on full for five minutes over hooking up behind another goddam Dragonfly any day of the week.

When I was working for Kitty Hawk in '82 there was an ultralight boom and a lot of John Harris's business was selling Quicksilver kits. (That was the popular design that the Dragonfly was based on.) They used guys to fly them up and down the beach and make them visible. I think the typical career was five days to a week. Engine failures on takeoff left and right. The pilots said, "Fuck this!"

I flew a weight-shift Quick a couple times. Pontoons, fifteen horsepower two stroke Yamaha. You needed A LOT of Albemarle Sound between you and land to get that thing in the air. And, once you got it there, in order to climb you needed to build up as much speed as possible then sneak the nose up for a second or two when it wasn't paying attention.

On my second and last flight I eventually got up a couple grand and flew over Colington Island. Over the water the air had been glassy smooth but there were clouds and, big surprise, blast of choppy thermal turbulence over the land. Should've probably tried to work things but I'd never thermalled before and was scared and just trying to stay level and get the fuck outta there. Every time I got kicked I'd have lost ten or fifteen feet recovering and for a while I was going down faster than I was clearing island. Heavy bird, pontoons, no power, nuthin' but trees... Gawd I was scared.

But I ended up clearing it OK and went onto more fun.

Before I could fly it again some idiot friend of asshole Mark Airy got ahold of it. Got airborne over a marsh, tried to climb out, stalled, pancaked, totaled it. End of my ultralight career.

[<BS>]

I flew a weight-shift Quick a couple times.

My second glider was a Quicksilver. It was home built. To save money you could use two pieces of spruce glued together and put in a jig to form a rib. My friend did that and he used ripstop nylon instead of dacron. The high point of the rib flattened and moved closer to the center of the cord. The fabric on the rudder would bow and the rudder frame didn't have a trailing edge. It was an absolute Pig. You'd have to hold yourself over for almost 3 seconds before it would start turning. Fortunately there wasn't much traffic at the POM in '74. I soared it a couple times and was getting ready to make a flying wing out of it when I got an offer for it. I sold it and probably saved my life.

[Tad Eareckson]

Stuff that alters its length and/or width - bad idea around aircraft.

Donnell had this really cool idea that you could save an Early Eighties thousand bucks by using eighth inch nylon parachute shroud line in place of a constant tension winch.

Mike Robertson got an eye shot out in '86 by a tow ring recoiled back to the boat when an Infallible Weak Link increased the safety of the towing operation as a solo glider was climbing normally and the polypro realized it was free to return to its normal length. (Asshole blamed the pilot for swapping out a much safer weak link and using one which would allow him to climb a bit higher without telling him.)

Each year hang gliders lose miles of climb because of nylon versus Dacron or Spectra glider and harness suspension.

Nylon works great for parachute stuff when the thing you were using to stay up is broken or for when you fall off a cliff - but not much else.