I have already let Davis Straub know...
Good ol' Davis. Tireless crusader for advancing hang gliding safety - 'specially the towing flavors.
Not much trouble replacing the asterisks and amending the last name.
Update:
http://ozreport.com/20.250
Bruno on his Russian mouth release
Yep.
I can't trust the mechanical competence of everyone I might sell a release, to modify them appropriately.
Even though I wasn't making any money off the venture, I'm concerned about liability.
Several issues...
- From the entire sordid world history of hang glider towing I know of zero instances of any victim or next of kin making the slightest effort to sue a single perpetrator of a Reliable Release or Infallible Weak Link out of so much as a penny - much as I wish the case were otherwise. Take the example of a sleazy motherfucker like Matt Taber who knowingly circulates expensive total pieces o' crap that fail left and right and never bothers to put out so much as an advisory, let alone a recall.
I WISH people WOULD sue these motherfuckers out of existence and get them in prison for manslaughter where they belong but it just doesn't happen. Arys Moorhead's family was in incredibly ideal position to totally annihilate u$hPa but never lifted a finger. Nobody in the family even really interested in finding out what went wrong and why.
- The individuals making efforts to acquire equipment such as this are at least a notch above the dregs that constitute 99.9 percent of the sport's participants. They're not buying the total crap...
http://ozreport.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=30971
Zach Marzec
Jim Rooney - 2013/02/12 18:00:27 UTC
Deltaman loves his mouth release.
BFD
I get tired as hell "refuting" all these mouth release and "strong link" arguments. Dig through the forums if you want that. I've been doing it for years but unfortunately the peddlers are religious in their beliefs so they find justification any way they can to "prove" their stuff. This is known as "Confirmation Bias"... seeking data to support your theory... it's back-asswards. Guess what? The shit doesn't work. If it did, we'd be using it everywhere. But it doesn't stand the test of reality.
http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=34646
Are you satisfied with flex wing handling qualities?
Ryan Voight - 2016/08/22 20:14:50 UTC
The reason this is a trick question, is the same reason it should be irrelevant that the Lookout release has less mechanical advantage, and may be difficult to use during the high tension of a lock-out. There are other releases (no so common anymore, thankfully) that could become full-on inoperable when the tension increased...
So... are you willing and able to manually release when you believe you are entering an unrecoverable lockout? Hint- if you are *entering* an unrecoverable lockout... you should have already A) steered yourself back where you belong, and if you were unable to do A then do B) release before before BEFORE entering an unrecoverable lockout situation.
Failing to fly the glider where you want it to fly is a serious situation... a lockout is an even more serious situation, but it is a symptom that follows that first problem. Failing to recognize the first problem, and remedy or escape *BEFORE* the following lockout ensues... THAT is what people seem not to get here.
Davis wrote pretty extensively about this when the comp-fatality happened, and even shared how the comp rules were written to ENCOURAGE "when in doubt, just get out". Frankly, a lockout should never happen... it's not a single failure, and it's not a problem with the equipment or with the mechanics or physics of what is being attempted... a lockout can only happen as the result of operator error(S)... plural.
...The Industry's trying to feed them. They know something about what the score is and how to play the game.
- Nobody ever slammed in JUST because of a release failure (or the safety of the towing operation being increased by an Infallible Weak Link). You almost always need to have a moderate shitload of things all going wrong at the same time. If this Kaluzhin release failed ever hundredth pull you'd hafta go through a lot of lifetimes for a fair expectation of a kill. Look at how many decades and hundreds of thousands of Rooney Link flights it took us to get a good clean indisputable kill. And even that would've been a nonevent minus the pro toad bridle.
You're taking a much higher risk of getting your ass sued out of existence driving to the grocery store than you would be by putting hundreds of Kaluzhin releases into circulation.
Making those things readily available to US market was a great - if unrewarding and underutilized - contribution to the sport.
If that is the case then I suspect that the issue can be eliminated by threading a length of line though both hollow rivets and then tying the free ends together thus forming a loop.
Brilliant. My head was locked into the strategies of eliminating or smoothing projections. Build them up and extend them for uniformity.
Another thought along that line... Run a threaded rod through the offending rivet. Diameter as large as the ID will allow, length = (the length of the rivet) plus (the appropriate nylock times two). Like:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aerotowrelease/8306258400/
'cept with nylocks on both sides. It would configure it so's you'd really hafta try hard to fuck it up. And I'm not a fan of assholes stupid enough to do shit like that...
http://c2.staticflickr.com/8/7459/14026541561_c29a91247c_o.png
...participating/surviving in the sport.
Just from looking at that photo I might be more concerned about the weak link becoming wedged between one or both of the outer plates and the base of the gate.
I don't think that's an actual issue. This thing's basically a homemade adaptation of a spinnaker shackle...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aerotowrelease/8305428629/
...and we've never heard such a report involving either mechanism...
I hope that that gap is tiny.
...even with fishing line so safe that six consecutive gliders blow off in light morning conditions.
Or as an alternative to grinding the pin flush, epoxy or some other material could be added to contour.
That's what I was thinking initially.
Note that this issue of problematic pivot pin contact was also a big factor in the devolution of Industry Standard aerotowing equipment. The Industry Standard safe towing system focal point was getting cut by the ultra fine sharp edges of the rivet heads so, of course, rather than just deburr them with a fine file...
http://c2.staticflickr.com/2/1568/25934364401_3d6d2c6b9f_o.png
Keep up the great work, Quest fucking geniuses.
