Found this little gem searching for material with which to continue ripping Bart No-Stress-Because-I-Was-High Weghorst a new asshole.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PpKA8nw23I
COWBOY UP XC BOHL DAY 1 / Hang Gliding VLOG #21
Pisses me off this asshole (sorry) gets immortalized with a major annual AT fly-in event when his only contribution to the sport was demonstrating, yet again, what can happen when one violates the crap outta every sane AT operating standard and FAA reg one can list and reduces all his safety margins to tissue paper thin - while one hundred percent of the individuals who've worked and fought their asses off to get all the problems fixed get nothing but marginalized, pissed all over, exiled, written out of the history books.
Interesting the contrast between the ways the last two Quest Darwin cases were dealt with.
- We'll never really know what happened with Zack Marzec. Total mystery. Not one ghost of an idea about anything that could've been done differently at either end of the string. Did everything right yet was still DOA. Totally innocent victim. Could've happened to the best of us and did. And after five and a half weeks of violent mainstream forum wars in which all the Industry dickheads were getting cut to ribbons all the threads got locked. And immediately afterwards nobody ever heard from him again.
- Jeff Bohl took his hand off the control bar for a second and a half to secure a camera he hadn't properly stowed at preflight. Tad-O-Link increased the safety of the towing operation a millisecond before his Pilot In Command fixed whatever was going on back there to keep her 582 Dragonfly from being steered into the trees. No argument from any quarter. Screwed the pooch, bought the farm. Let's immortalize him - right up there with Rob Kells who was a friend to every pilot he ever met. (Lotta dead ones he never met 'cause he never did shit to fix the issues that were killing them - which would've necessitated him becoming an enemy of damn near every pilot he ever met.)
Title shot:
00-14603
http://c2.staticflickr.com/2/1933/44102650815_176479a7f1_o.png
Seventy percent reduction of full resolution frame. Tells us pretty much everything we wanna know:
- Wills Wing
- Cowboy Up
- Jeff Bohl
- Easy Flyer (approximate frame 44606)
- Kool Kid comp pilot:
-- no:
--- weak link at the end of the towline - as per FAA AT regs (better look below at 14-14603 (and elsewhere)
--- wheels/skids
-- easily reachable bent pin barrel release
-- long thin:
--- pro toad bridle
--- Standard Aerotow Weak Link serving as an emergency and backup release
01-12716
- 01 - chronological order
- -1 - minutes
- 27 - seconds
- 14 - frame (24 fps)
Wolfi. Wills Wing pilot.
01-12716
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Bent pin crap pro toad release on the starboard end of the long thin wrap-proof bridle, 130 pound Greenspot extremely long track record emergency release between the port bridle end and the tow loop. And the launch monkey to help get the cart rolling 'cause you don't want the focal point of your safe towing system increasing the safety of the towing operation before you get airborne.
02-13012
http://c2.staticflickr.com/2/1917/44961096771_1beced788b_o.png
Thanks for the nice illustration of the two pieces o' crap that precipitated the last two Quest fatalities, Wolfi.
03-13119
http://c2.staticflickr.com/2/1937/44241422024_e67ec8e242_o.png
Appropriate and with a finished length of 1.5 inches or less. What more could one ask for? One on the other end of the bridle so that WHEN you get a wrap you've still got something to limit the load?
04-13219
http://c2.staticflickr.com/2/1979/44241421814_b33fe6a481_o.png
Nah, if you did that you'd double the tow pressure required to blow off and endanger the tug by neutralizing whatever the fuck it's using for a weak link.
Check out the frame below and backtrack above. Note how Wolfi's instrument pod has rotated down as the cart's been jolted along down the runway.
05-13409
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06-13421
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Pretty hard up against the port control tube just off the cart.
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12-13910
http://c2.staticflickr.com/2/1967/44961091621_d31e3657b0_o.png
See? It's a total myth that you need TWO hands to fly a glider on tow - even pro toad.
13-14401
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http://ozreport.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1143
Death at Tocumwal
Davis Straub - 2006/01/24 12:27:32 UTC
I'm willing to put the barrel release within a few inches of my hand.
Me too, Davis. That's WELL within easy reach. Besides, that's the only configuration that qualifies as an "appropriate bridle" for u$hPa sanctioned comps. So it's not like I've got an actual choice anyway.
Video title shot:
14-14603
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15-14711
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18-20123
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19-20223
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Pity we didn't get to see the easily reachable release blown on this one. But I imagine it was as much of a nonissue as all the other ones we see an know about.
20-22715
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Yeah. Bent pin. (Bobby's a fucking genius when it comes to this shit.)
21-30911
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24-31803
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26-32004
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A foot off the deck. Shouldn't you be upright with your hands on the control tubes at shoulder or ear height where you can't control the glider at this altitude?
27-32015
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Don't you know enough not to do any turns below two hundred feet? And since you bottomed out at under two feet on your downwind you're dead at least a hundred times over.
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(A little ghost of a glory effect around the camera's shadow in the following final and landing frames.)
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32-32800
http://c2.staticflickr.com/2/1945/30023860367_a99abe9293_o.png
Note that this is a run out landing in easy conditions by a guy who's got experience, airtime, skill coming outta his ass - not the classic Ryan Instant-Hands-Free-Release Voight "Perfect Landing" with the perfect flare timing that all Day One, Flight One students are assured will be the only thing keeping them alive down the roads of their flying careers.
33-32806
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Doesn't seem to be the typical narrow dry riverbed with large rocks strewn all over the place we prefer to utilize for our LZs either.
34-32817
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And here we go again with the Easy Flyer...
35-41517
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...'cause Wills Wing won't ever acknowledge that their conventional CERTIFIED gliders can be landed like:
32-2502
http://c2.staticflickr.com/2/1946/43993500355_9b22e4a1ac_o.png
Velcroed-on Wallaby release 'cause Wills Wing uncertified gliders aren't designed to be motorized, tethered, or towed...
36-43208
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...'specially the ones they demo at fly-ins in Texas memorializing pilots killed in low level lockouts in Florida. (Good thing ya got California, Wills Wing. Probably the only place on the planet where your gliders AREN'T getting airborne by being motorized, tethered, or towed.) Note that the appropriate weak link with the finished length of 1.5 inches or less is a single loop of 130 pound Greenspot with a finished length of 3.0 inches or more engaging the spinnaker shackle that was banned (at least for a short while) from the Worlds at Hay after killing Robin Strid on 2005/01/09.
(The short while ended up being three days - which the Safety Committee found to be well more than adequate for the issue to fully resolve itself ('specially with all the ultra-safe weak link they implemented to make sure there wasn't a snowball's chance in hell of any glider getting into too much trouble) - and the Wallaby release was back up and doing fine from 2005/01/13 through the conclusion of the comp on 2005/01/20. (Other geographical areas were not affected and the mechanism has racked up an extremely long track record in the near decade since.))
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44-51704
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Easily reachable bent pin backup release on the port side of the swing seat harness.
45-52622
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Dontchya just love the cup holder and plastic water bottle. I guess when you've got all that Easy Flyer crap in the airflow to begin with you're not much worried about performance anyway. (Do any of you other dinosaur guys remember the period before humans became incapable of drinking any water that didn't flow from a plastic bottle?)
51-54809
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And also in this configuration one hand is more than enough of what's need to keep an aerotowed glider under safe control at all times. So the two easily reachable releases provided here are really just screwball overkill.
52-54900
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And AT issues - the weak links one in particular - are much too complex to be explained on a glider forum. So go back to your friendly neighborhood AT operation - particularly if your neighborhood is Wharton, Texas - and take a course from a highly experienced AT professional so's he can bring you up to some minimal level of understanding, something that won't overwhelm your limited intellectual capacity.
Thanks Bart. But we can see for ourselves the best of what's going on there - which is pretty much indiscernible from the worst of what's going on there. Not to mention exactly the same as what's going on everywhere else. And we've got:
http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=21033
barrels release without any tension except weight of rope..
Bart Weghorst - 2011/02/25 19:06:26 UTC
But 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 2 hands to get the pin out of the barrel.
No stress because I was high.
...and...
http://ozreport.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=24846
Is this a joke ?
Bart Weghorst - 2011/08/28 20:29:27 UTC
Now I don't give a shit about breaking strength anymore. I really don't care what the numbers are. I just want my weaklink to break every once in a while.
...which you've let stand for the past seven plus years without further comment or any update in position. And not one of your fuckin' Flight Park Mafia colleagues has whispered a single word of caution concerning Cowboy Up professionalism or competency. So as far as I'm concerned a new AT person is gonna be way better off reinventing AT for himself from scratch. Or can you explain to me how that wouldn't be the case?
(Note the cool post designation below.)
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Edit - 2018/09/30 19:45:00 UTC
Amended with the video title shot and the frame from which it was composed. Give it a skim.
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