When we start out we want the nose a little higher. That angle of attack right here, to level ground, is very comparable to a hill anyway. The attitude is lower here than here, but the angle of attack needs to be high.
The PITCH ATTITUDE needs to be high. The ANGLE OF ATTACK needs to be THE SAME.
If you wanna see a high pitch attitude and somewhat high angle of attack instantly converted to decreasing pitch attitude and EXTREMELY high angle of attack then watch what happens when a standard aerotow weak link kicks in to increase the safety of the tow operation:
Mike... You OK with putting something from someone who doesn't know the difference between pitch attitude and angle of attack up on Wills Wing's website?
My job on takeoff is to make it smooth and gradual. If they're not doing it right, I don't add enough power for them to get off the ground. We keep them low and slow. And that's the whole idea of keeping it safe.
With each flight, demonstrates a method of establishing that the pilot is hooked in just prior to launch.
Manned Kiting
The Basic Handbook of Tow Launched Hang Gliding
Daniel F. Poynter
1974
"The greatest dangers are a rope break or a premature release." - Richard Johnson
Gregg McNamee - 1996/12
Primary Release Criteria
To actuate the primary release the pilot does not have to give up any control of the glider. (Common sense tells us that the last thing we want to do in an emergency situation is give up control of the glider in order to terminate the tow.)
If your system requires you to take your hand off the control bar to actuate the release it is not suitable.
Once again history has shown us that this thread-through system can hook up and the hang glider remains being towed by the keel only, with the bridle well out of reach of even a hook knife. I know of just one pilot to survive this type of hook-up, took him some twelve months to walk again though.
Christian Thoreson - 2004/10
Thus wheel landings, the safest and easiest way to consistently land a hang glider...
Most common HG injury... spiral fracture of the humerus.
- They're NOT doing it right.
- You're:
-- teaching them that it's OK to launch without verifying their connection to the glider IMMEDIATELY prior to launch.
-- putting them all up on one of your bullshit 130 pound Greenspot standard aerotow weak links without having a fucking clue what the purpose of a weak link is.
-- equipping them with the worst imaginable shit you could get your hands on and calling it an aerotow type V-bridle and release system and telling them that it works well for scooter towing when it very obviously doesn't by any stretch of the imagination.
-- telling them that it's OK to use a shit secondary release as a backup for a shit primary release and blow the bottom end of the bridle loose.
-- having them launch, fly, and land with their hands on the downtubes so that their chances of breaking an arm go through the ceiling when there's absolutely no reason to be doing so and hardwiring them to the extent that they won't ever even CONSIDER a wheel landing or bellying in.
-- doing zilch to educate them about a lot of the major killers in hang gliding.
You're not "keeping it safe". You're teaching and enabling very dangerous behavior like the kind that got your douchebag buddy Jim Rooney half killed and his victim flown into the power lines, your student Holly Korzilius half killed, and your student Bill Priday fully killed.
You're doing the equivalent of handing out Airsoft guns, claiming that you you're running a really solid safety program 'cause nobody's gotten his head blown off, and ignoring the incidents in which your students get their heads blown off when they start using the real thing.
Alright, once the student is in the air and flying along, even our total beginners don't even have to release the rope.
Great, Steve!
- Put your total beginners up and IMMEDIATELY start teaching them that they don't hafta release the rope! There's a guy at the other end who will handle that for them!
- And besides, there's a standard aerotow weak link that, according to the suggested reference...
Towing Aloft - 1998/01
Weak links very clearly will provide protection from excessive angles of attack, high bank turns and the like for this form of towing.
...very clearly will provide protection from excessive angles of attack, high bank turns, and the like for this form of towing.
- It's like what we do when we teach kids to drive cars. Forget about the brake pedal. We don't need to worry about that one right now 'cause your driving instructor has a brake pedal on his side. Just do the gas and steering for now. We'll get to the brake pedal in a weekend or two. It's actually not all that important and doesn't work worth shit anyway - there's lotsa air in the lines and the pedal usually falls off the lever when you try to stop too fast.
It's just one less thing for them deal with.
Yeah. Like the hook-in check.
Let's see... What else can we skip over to give them fewer things to deal with?
The foot landing? No, they might hafta land in a narrow dry riverbed with large rocks strewn all over the place or a field filled with seven foot high corn.
How 'bout the sidewire load test? Too easy. Nobody does those anyway 'cause that might be just the thing that puts a damaged wire over the brink.
Got it! The standard aerotow weak link inspection! The fuzzier it is the safer it is!
We can fly the student along to the end of the course without running out of rope and without running out of landing area and float them to the ground. They're only just a few feet off the ground anyway, so as we get them to a desired position, if their wings are level I will gently start reducing the power until the student lands. What we try to teach them to do is to have their legs under them, walking in the air so as their feet start gracefully touching the ground they'll start supporting their own weight and gently pushing the bar out on the Condor until it comes to a stop.
So we always err on the side of conservatism.
Right, Steve. You do everything the way it's been done for the past twenty or thirty years 'cause that's the way it's been done for twenty or thirty years.
And perish the thought that you should look around once every five or ten years and see if there are better ways of doing anything.
And also perish the thought that you should look back beyond twenty or thirty years ago to see if there were better ways of doing things before the culture started becoming terminally and irreversibly stupid.
We want it to be soft, we want it to be slow. If a student's low and they're doing things wrong we let 'em land, go back, talk about it. And we TEACH - that's our job.
And whatever it is you teach - no matter how totally insane it is - everybody will learn. And everyone will rave about how really great you are at teaching it. And nobody will ever question the legitimacy of anything you teach.
So we teach them and we try to do it properly.
And as long as there are no enforced standards, everything's a matter of opinion, and nobody's ever held accountable for anything all you hafta do is TRY to do it properly - or really just make a pretense of it 'cause nobody in this idiot sport has enough in the way of brains to know the difference.
And you can - and WILL - always blame anything that happens to your students on pilot error.
More Details on Equipment:
V-Bridle/Release System
The harnesses are generally the same as I would use on the training hill - except for I do have to sew some tabs on here to pull. 'Cause I like pulling from the hips on my system, because we also pull from the glider up high, uh, much like you saw today on the flights that we were doing. We like to use a system very similar to the aerotow system and I found from doing it myself and experimenting with the teaching that we have much better luck. Not to say that some schools can't have good luck just pulling from the body, but we found that it... it just solidifies a lot of things that they're doing and we're controlling the pitch attitude a little better by having this at the right point on the keel.
Where that right point is takes some experimentation. If you have it too far forward on the keel although it does make the glider harder to launch. We found on gliders like the Falcon just an inch in front of the hang point raises the thrust line enough to make it much more adaptable. And on a glider like the Condor a few inches forward seems to be helpful.
But with the towline we use a standard weak link like we would for aerotow... Uh... This... In this particular case it's 130 greenline, 130 pound test.
We also use safety devices like this secondary barrel release that we'd see in aerotowing. As a beginner they don't need to use that but as they get high enough where they could possibly overfly some things... uh... with some... uh... with some problems we want a secondary release in the system and we want to teach them good habits from the start with that system so we'll use that.
We always use steel carabiners and try to have the best quality equipment we can.
As a primary release on the glider, as you saw again with the towing today, we use the standard Moyes/Bailey aerotow release, the spinnaker release, with the bicycle handle on the downtube right about where the normal hand placement would be of the student so it's very easy to get at to activate.
'Cause I like pulling from the hips on my system...
Ya know what most people like on their systems? They like pulling from the shoulders.
...because we also pull from the glider up high...
Yeah, they do that too. And still they pull from the shoulders down low.
They launch from dollies and start and fly prone 'cause the glider's a lot easier to control and fly that way and it allows them to configure with a release system they can actually USE when they need to.
We like to use a system very similar to the aerotow system...
Why don't you like to use a system EXACTLY like the best aerotow system yet developed instead of teaching them a bunch of crap they'll never use in real flying and putting them up on a bunch of dangerous crap no sane person would ever dream of going up with?
...and I found from doing it myself and experimenting with the teaching that we have much better luck.
- Yeah Steve, an ENORMOUS amount of the crap you're teaching is based on LUCK.
- Better LUCK than whom? Upon what data are you basing that statement?
- Do your students continue to have good luck when they operate in the real world? Or does it start running out when they're aerotowing and landing in real conditions and running off of real launch ramps?
Not to say that some schools can't have good luck...
This is AVIATION, Steve. This game is not about LUCK.
...just pulling from the body, but we found that it... it just solidifies a lot of things that they're doing and we're controlling the pitch attitude a little better by having this at the right point on the keel.
- In other words... You don't have a crumb's worth of evidence that you're having any better results than anybody training with a Koch two stage that people have a reasonably good chance of getting to work when they need it to and would pretty much eliminate any possibility of the basetube getting pulled back by a bridle.
- Fine. Start them off two point. It DOES help with the pitch at low tow angles. But when you're towing them high put them on a Koch two stage. You're supposed to be TRAINING people and you'll produce better pilots giving them some diversity of experience and making some PART of a task a little more demanding - while you're making other parts of the task LESS demanding and safer.
But with the towline we use a standard weak link like we would for aerotow...
- Well of course we do. Where would we be without standards?
Always use an appropriate weak link with a finished length of 1.5 inches or less.
- Is this also the appropriate weak link specified in all the Wills Wing owner's manuals?
Uh... This... In this particular case it's 130 greenline, 130 pound test.
- In what particular case?
- Why do we have particular cases in scooter towing but not aerotowing?
- What other particular cases do we need to be concerned about in scooter towing?
- Do you have the slightest fucking clue what you're talking about?
We also use safety devices like this secondary barrel release that we'd see in aerotowing.
I've had it once where the pin had bent inside the barrel from excessive tow force. My weaklink was still intact. The tug pilot's weaklink broke so I had the rope. I had to use two hands to get the pin out of the barrel.
No stress because I was high.
We're using a standard weak link like we would for aerotow, aren't we?
As a beginner they don't need to use that but as they get high enough where they could possibly overfly some things... uh... with some... uh... with some problems we want a secondary release in the system and we want to teach them good habits from the start with that system so we'll use that.
OK, now I understand why we also use safety devices like this secondary barrel release that we'd see in aerotowing. If we get high enough where we could possibly overfly with some problems we want a secondary release in the system and we want to learn good habits from the start with that system so we'll use that.
And here I was thinking that we need it 'cause we're were using a total piece of shit as a primary and there was a possibility of the bridle tying itself to the tow ring. Glad you cleared that up for me.
Holger Selover-Stephan - 2010/05/28 22:16:33 UTC
Portland, Oregon
I ordered and received a few barrel releases from Blue Sky. They have straight pins, not the curved ones I'm used to. Steve at Blue Sky tells me this:
...they [the curved pins] don't release with as little tension on them as the straight pins. Otherwise, there is no difference. It makes it hard to put just a rope on the barrel end, which encourages a weak link. Just a good idea. That's why we've been shifting that way, as are many other manufacturers of these releases.
So how come if we get high enough where we could possibly overfly with some problems we want a secondary release in the system and we want to learn good habits from the start with that system so we'll use that but we don't shift the way of many other manufacturers of these releases and use one with a straight pin which encourages a secondary weak link? How come you put just a rope on the barrel end?
Joe Gregor - 2006/09
Holly Korzilius
2005/05/29
Holly Korzilius
While getting ready to fly, I discovered that I had lost one of the lines that make up the aerotow release. The missing line was the primary release line that connects to the keel (as opposed to the secondary release line that runs shoulder-to-shoulder).
As a result of changing her bridle arraignment, the accident pilot had inadvertently removed the weak link from the system.
Asshole.
As a primary release on the glider, as you saw again with the towing today, we use the standard Moyes/Bailey aerotow release, the spinnaker release, with the bicycle handle on the downtube...
Maybe eight to ten years ago I got several comments from people saying a popular aerotow release (with a bicycle type brake lever) would fail to release at higher tensions. I called and talked to the producer sharing the people's experiences and concerns. I inquired to what tension their releases were tested to but he refused to say, just aggressively stated they never had any problems with their releases, they were fine, goodbye, click.
Standard weak link, standard secondary barrel release, standard primary Moyes/Bailey release... I can't tell you how reassuring it is for me to know how conscientious you are about adhering to standards.
...right about where the normal hand placement would be of the student so it's very easy to get at to activate.
Yeah?
If somebody couldn't release here, at the altitudes I'm pulling 'em, as long as I'm not making the rope shorter, they could fly this far PAST the pulley and still be safe. But generally I'm not pulling anybody high unless they've proven to me that they can release every time.
Doesn't sound like you have much confidence in that statement - even when you've got people straight, level, and trim under low tension in light glassy conditions.
We always use steel carabiners and try to have the best quality equipment we can.
Standard 130 greenline weak links, standard bent pin barrel releases, standard Moyes/Bailey aerotow release - AND steel carabiners. Nothing but the best for our students. None of those cardboard carabiners that other schools are using with so much resultant carnage.
And of course...
With each flight, demonstrates a method of establishing that the pilot is hooked in just prior to launch.
Daniel, Linda, and I are driving up to Blue Sky flight park this morning to see Steve and to drop off Bill's Sport 2. The glider is in good shape - no tears in the sail, no noticeable breaks or bends in the airframe. Lots of scuffs on the leading edge, tangled VG lines, but nothing Steve couldn't easily fix. (As I mentioned earlier, gliders don't land hard with nobody in them.)
Steve Wendt (Bill's instructor) has already talked about instituting preflight hang checks (meaning literally getting down on the ground and hanging in your harness, just like you'd do in the mountains) for all of his students at the flight park - just to get them into the habit of doing it - even if they don't need to do it for a towed launch.
...teaching people to do a hang check at some point before every launch...
BTW, Steve Wendt is exceptionally knowledgeable. Hell, he's the one that signed off my instructor rating.
...it's really hard to beat...
The Press - 2006/03/15
The Civil Aviation Authority is urgently pushing for new hang-gliding industry standards after learning a hang-gliding pilot who suffered serious injuries in a crash three weeks ago had not clipped himself on to the glider.
Extreme Air tandem gliding pilot James (Jim) Rooney safely clipped his passenger into the glider before departing from the Coronet Peak launch site, near Queenstown, CAA sports and recreation manager Rex Kenny said yesterday.
In a video, he was seen to hold on to the glider for about fifty meters before hitting power lines.
Rooney and the passenger fell about fifteen meters to the ground.
The passenger, believed to be a tourist in her twenties, suffered minor to moderate leg lacerations.
...the Blue Sky method of checking that you're connected to a glider before committing to your launch run.
The rope that we use is 7/64 inch Spectron. It's a twelve hundred pound test rope that's coated with teflon. It's a very good rope. It's hollow braid so we can splice easily if we need it and fid the rope. It works very well.
Yeah Steve, you really want a very good rope.
Manned Kiting
The Basic Handbook of Tow Launched Hang Gliding
Daniel F. Poynter
1974
"The greatest dangers are a rope break or a premature release." - Richard Johnson
One of the fundamentals of towing that goes back to the Bronze Age. Twelve hundred pounds should do the job OK.
But with the towline we use a standard weak link like we would for aerotow...
And of course you wanna match that very good rope up with a very good weak link.
From section 3.4 of the 1999 Hang Gliding Federation of Australia Towing Manual:
Recommended breaking load of a weak link is 1g. - i.e. the combined weight of pilot, harness and glider (dependent on pilot weight - usually approximately 90 to 100 kg for solo operations; or approximately 175 kg for tandem operations).
Here is the requirement from the 2007 Worlds local rules (which I wrote) for weaklinks:
Pilots must use weaklinks provided by the meet organizers and in a manner approved by the meet organizers. All weaklinks will be checked and use of inappropriate weaklinks will require the pilot to go to the end of the launch line to change the weaklink.
Weaklinks will consist of a single loop of Cortland 130 lb Greenspot braided Dacron Tolling line and should be placed at one end of a shoulder bridle.
At the 2008 Forbes Flatlands Greenspot for the first time was used as the standard weaklink material (thanks in large part to the efforts of Bobby Bailey). We applaud these efforts to improve the safety of aerotowing by using a better weaklink material.
A Bailey/Moyes standard aerotow weak link. Should be also be perfect match for the Bailey/Moyes standard aerotow primary release. Would probably also be great to use with the Bailey/Moyes standard aerotow secondary release...
I've had it once where the pin had bent inside the barrel from excessive tow force. My weaklink was still intact. The tug pilot's weaklink broke so I had the rope. I had to use two hands to get the pin out of the barrel.
No stress because I was high.
...if you ever felt like putting one there.
Uh... This... In this particular case it's 130 greenline, 130 pound test.
More Details on Equipment:
Return (Turn-Around) Pulley
The pulley itself in the ground... I do make these, you can buy commercially rated pulleys... A couple things that we look for... Number one, we want something that can flex around and move, we want something that spins easily, it does not have to be large - about a four inch pulley is a... three to four inches is plenty large for what we're doing out here.
This one I made with an idler pulley... Uh, one of the things you want to be concerned about is the bottom of the pulley, the inside... If the pulley has a groove that a rope could actually pull down into and tighten on, you'd want to avoid that kind of a pulley. This one is kind of brazed in between and has a smooth bottom and the rope when it's being pulled under tension will not wedge in between the plates of metal. So it's more of a U and that works very well.
A lot of these pulleys come with just a brass bushing in them... Uh, we pop that bushing out and replace it with a high speed roller bearing which is inexpensive to find and it rolls very well.
This particular pulley has thousands and thousands of tows on it. We even had a day after a heavy rain where it was submerged during the entire lesson in three inches of water. That was four years ago and I still haven't greased it or had to do any repairs to it, so it's sealed and does fine.
The two plates are nothing but eighth inch aluminum, the shape... though... not really significant... It does allow me to place the pulley the way I want. I've got three bolts around the pulley that act as guides so the rope can't come out of the pulley, it always stays on, I've never had a line pop off this pulley and wedge down in here.
I keep the tolerances small, it's easy to do by shimming it properly with washers until you get just the right fit, there's no drag, nothing to keep it from working properly.
I just use an old carabiner to hook this to the ground. Um, it's just attached to a bolt at the back of the pulley and then will have screw-in augers into the ground that we'll hook this to...
But the pulleys are easy to make and can be... can be constructed in very little time. A couple hours of metal work. If people aren't, uh... aren't very... adept at working with metal it would be easy to get a machine shop to do it or I'd be glad to help guide people or make them for them. A very simple device.
- anchoring turnaround pulleys:
More Details on Equipment:
The Pulley Anchor
The anchors that we use... We'll use anywhere between twelve to eighteen inch anchors in the soil that we have here. We have a clay type soil and they bite really well.
You don't want to use the coiling type of dog anchor - they are not strong enough. But we'll use the big heavy steel auger that has the welded auger just at the bottom. And once you get those screwed in, we just leave 'em permanently on our site. Um, many people that would use a... an area that has... that everything has to be taken up on, you just screw the anchor in and unscrew them at the end of the day. Maybe use some kind of pipe to use as a lever to turn it, and it's just a few minutes to put it in and a few minutes to pull it out.
And we've never pulled an anchor out of the ground here at Blue Sky. I have been to places where the soil is very sandy and... and it slowly can work out. In that case you probably want a longer anchor - maybe eighteen or twenty-four inches so it goes deeper into the soil and bites really well.
Having it pull out of the soil is kinda like having a weak link break, not a whole lot is gonna happen there for the kind of towing that I'm doing, again, low level towing. But it's just a hassle you don't really want to... to have a problem with.
- primary releases:
As a primary release on the glider, as you saw again with the towing today, we use the standard Moyes/Bailey aerotow release, the spinnaker release, with the bicycle handle on the downtube right about where the normal hand placement would be of the student so it's very easy to get at to activate.
- secondary releases:
We also use safety devices like this secondary barrel release that we'd see in aerotowing. As a beginner they don't need to use that but as they get high enough where they could possibly overfly some things... uh... with some... uh... with some problems we want a secondary release in the system and we want to teach them good habits from the start with that system so we'll use that.
- weak links:
But with the towline we use a standard weak link like we would for aerotow... Uh... This... In this particular case it's 130 greenline, 130 pound test.
Something visible for the students to use out in front is a marker... Uh, we use the cone for three purposes... Uh, a mild target out front to look through, but primarily as a cushion. We place this roughly two thirds of the way between where we're towing from and where the end of the line will go around the pulley. We never want one of the students to get the rope that short. So it's... it's just a device we use for safety.
If somebody couldn't release here, at the altitudes I'm pulling 'em, as long as I'm not making the rope shorter, they could fly this far PAST the pulley and still be safe. But generally I'm not pulling anybody high unless they've proven to me that they can release every time.
Just how the fuck does somebody do that, Steve?
If he's released - with the glider straight, level, and trimmed - five, ten, twenty, thirty times in a row has he PROVEN to you that he can release every time?
How many flights does a typical student get before you start flying him high? You can get a Hang Three with ninety. If someone has released ninety times times in a row has he PROVEN to you that he can release every time?
Has the release itself PROVEN to you that it can release every time?
If so, what the fuck is the secondary for?
Oh yeah...
As a beginner they don't need to use that but as they get high enough where they could possibly overfly some things... uh... with some... uh... with some problems we want a secondary release in the system and we want to teach them good habits from the start with that system so we'll use that.
It's just there in case they get high enough where they could possibly overfly some things with some problems.
So is that why they use it in aerotowing? In case they get high enough where they could possibly overfly some things with some problems?
I got news for ya, Steve. There's NOBODY with an IQ up into the double digits who isn't scared shitless of these things. Anybody who's PROVEN to HIMSELF that he can release every time is a total fucking moron. Same sorta idiot who's positive that he'll never launch unhooked...
At that moment, I would banish all concern about launching unhooked. I had taken care of it. It was done. It was out of my mind.
...'cause of some procedure he did five minutes before running off the ramp.
I have the best fuckin' release on the planet. All I've gotta do is twist my grip on the basetube and I'm gone. At altitude I've been knocked on my ear so fast I couldn't even think about what I should be doing until I was dead for the purpose of the exercise. That pretty much proved to me that I COULDN'T release every time when I really needed to. And that was with a high Advanced rating after a quarter century of a lot of flavors of towing dating back to 1980.
As a primary release on the glider, as you saw again with the towing today, we use the standard Moyes/Bailey aerotow release, the spinnaker release, with the bicycle handle on the downtube right about where the normal hand placement would be of the student so it's very easy to get at to activate.
You are so totally full of shit. Anybody suffering from the delusion that that lever on the downtube right about where the normal hand placement would be of the student is very easy to get at to activate has no business whatsoever participating in this sport - let alone teaching it.
And, again, this isn't something just can't just work some of the time, it's got to work all the time. And so far for us in about seventeen thousand tows it has.
Holly is doing as well as can be expected after fifteen hours of surgery. The doctors came to see us around 10:45 last night. They said everything went fine. Once into surgery, they found many more fractures than were evident on the CT scan. Holly's face wasn't just cracked in a few places, it was shattered into many pieces over large areas. Piecing everything together and securing it in place was meticulous, time-consuming work.
I have never had a lockout situation happen so quickly and dramatically and had no chance to release as I have always thought I could do.
Bill Bryden - 2000/02
Dennis Pagen informed me several years ago about an aerotow lockout that he experienced. One moment he was correcting a bit of alignment with the tug and the next moment he was nearly upside down. He was stunned at the rapidity. I have heard similar stories from two other aerotow pilots.
- I take five hundred six year old kids and put them on bicycles with total shit for brakes - they can't get to them and it takes them a while to stop even if they do.
- I train them all to ride on an empty soccer field.
- They all learn to ride slow, fast, turns, no hands, wheelies, jumps, skids...
- Nobody ever gets so much as a skinned knee.
- That doesn't mean - even if you double, triple, or quadruple the age - it's safe to send them out in traffic with that level of training and the shit brakes I've taught them it's OK to use 'cause everybody else does.
- If just one of those kids EVER gets his face shattered 'cause he can't stop before he hits the lamp post because of the shitty brakes I've sent him out on and taught him it's OK to use I don't get to talk about what an awesome safety record my program has.
- If I'm just teaching them to ride with shitty brakes on an empty soccer field where it's virtually impossible to get hurt as a consequence of riding with shitty brakes I don't get to talk about what a great program I'm running.
You want just wide open spaces where a student can belly in while they're learning.
- How wide open a space is required for someone to belly in?
- At what:
-- stage of their training have they learned standup landings to the point at which:
--- you're confident that your students won't belly in?
--- it's acceptable to fly them without wheels?
-- flying sites within a three hundred mile radius of Manquin is it not easily feasible for people to belly in?
- Has anybody ever:
-- been hurt at Manquin as a consequence of bellying in?
-- broken an arm at Manquin as a consequence of a foot landing?
- Have any of your students ever:
-- been hurt at other sites as a consequence of bellying in?
-- had a shoulder ripped apart at another wide open site as a consequence of a foot landing?
Christian Thoreson - 2004/10
Thus wheel landings, the safest and easiest way to consistently land a hang glider...
- Do you ever teach people the safest and easiest way to consistently land a hang glider?
- Why not?
We want to create a safe environment. And that's our job as instructors, is to create a safe environment for our students. And that's what we try to do here.
- The crash reports are OOZING with people who've been mangled and killed in safe environments.
- I've personally been to the funerals of two people who slammed in while flying in safe environments.
- Your student:
-- Holly Korzilius totaled her glider and shattered her face slamming into your safe environment
-- Bill Priday launched into a safe environment with his carabiner clipped to his harness instead of his hang strap
BTW, Steve Wendt is exceptionally knowledgeable. Hell, he's the one that signed off my instructor rating.
-- douchebag buddy Jim Rooney launched his passenger - who was hooked in - and himself - who wasn't - into a safe environment and dove the glider into the powerlines by clinging onto the basetube.
I'll take being in a dangerous environment with safe equipment and a proper background in procedures behind me any day over being in a safe environment with the kind of shit equipment and training you put people up with.
We teach early in the morning and late in the day when there's hardly any wind, it certainly makes it safer and easier for everybody.
Yeah. There's a lot of crap you can get away with when the training environment is dumbed down enough. That's not necessarily a good thing in the long run though.
We use good equipment...
Yeah.
Steve Kinsley - 1996/05/09 15:50
Personal opinion. While I don't know the circumstances of Frank's death and I am not an awesome tow type dude, I think tow releases, all of them, stink on ice. Reason: You need two hands to drive a hang glider. You 'specially need two hands if it starts to turn on tow. If you let go to release, the glider can almost instantly assume a radical attitude.
Sure ya do, Steve.
...we have a lot more line out than we need, we don't want people running out of rope.
'Specially not with the standard Moyes/Bailey aerotow release with the bicycle handle on the downtube right about where the normal hand placement would be of the student so it's very easy to get at to activate.
Holly lay on the ground tangled up in her glider. She looked bad, but was moving both arms and both legs, which we took as a hopeful sign. Hank Hengst took command of the situation, taking one of Holly's hands while I held the other and spoke reassuringly to her. Hank immediately cut away the sail partially blocking her while we supported her head and tried our best to keep her immobile. Holly appeared incoherent, her breathing labored, and I don't know if she really knew who we were.
I asked someone if we could get some shade over Holly, and several pilots grabbed her chute and spread it in a canopy over all of us, keeping the hot sun off Holly's face.
I silently cursed every minute that passed without the ambulance arriving, my mind still racing, praying that Holly would be alright. After what seemed an eternity (but was probably fifteen to twenty minutes) the ambulance arrived, and after cutting Holly from her harness the paramedics had her on a backboard, then the gurney. I hopped into the ambulance, tears welling in my eyes, and we sped off to MCV Hospital in downtown Richmond, about twenty-five minutes away.
Makes it a lot easier for the ambulances to get in.
More Details on Equipment:
Tension Monitoring Device
When I'm operating the scooter, people a lot of times ask me how much tension is on the line. My answer is, I don't know.
Yeah, precisely the same answer we'd get for...
- What's the:
-- breaking strength of a loop of 130 pound Greenspot on the end of a two point bridle?
-- towline tension that blows a loop of 130 pound Greenspot on the end of a two point bridle?
- Why:
-- is a loop of 130 pound Greenspot a standard aerotow weak link?
-- are you using a loop of 130 pound Greenspot for scooter towing "in this particular case"?
- What's the purpose of a weak link?
I don't think we NEED to know.
No, you don't. But if you're gonna be the fuckin' top scooter tow guru on the planet it wouldn't have killed you to get yourself towed a couple of times with a tension gauge in front of your face so we'd have some actual numbers to work with.
We don't need to be looking at a gauge if my gauge is right in front of me. It's my student. If my student is too high off the ground, there's too much line tension. I have to reduce the power.
And I never cut the power, it's always reduced gradually, increase the power gradually.
