He explained rope break or weak link break, the nose points to the ground and you follow. Broken aluminum and broken bones follow that.
Yep...
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
Nuthin' new there.
The mantra was build speed, shallow climb, then try for altitude at a safe airspeed and altitude.
Excellent idea. Tow launched hang glider, slope launched hang glider, Dragonfly tug, sailplane, Cessna... You name it. Hard to go wrong with that approach.
I have had countless weaklink breaks and always had enough airspeed to make a decent landing.
Sorry lost interest right after:
I have had countless weaklink breaks...
That tells me that you're not a competent tow pilot and you're not flying at a competent tow operation. There is something damn close to ZERO excuse for EVER blowing a weak link in the course of a towing career.
Not everyone buys into push out when your feet leave the ground.
NO competent pilot relying on a rope or engine to get airborne buys into push out when your feet or wheels leave the ground or glider leaves the dolly. Quote me saying anything to the contrary.
All I'm saying is that if you're on a weak link or rope which fails when you push way the hell out - at any altitude - you and your driver are incompetent fucking morons who need your tickets suspended or revoked. A failed towline or weak link can kill you just as dead just as quickly as a frayed sidewire or...
- Thirty-two years ago Donnell Hewett founded a global lunatic religious cult based upon the proposition that there's no problem in towing that can't be solved by liberating the glider from the towline and a flimsy piece of fishing line is the only really effective way to accomplish that transition.
- The brain damaged cult of hang gliding swallowed what he was pushing hook, line, and sinker.
- Thousands of people in positions of power and control will look like the total fucking morons and serial killing sleazeballs they are if they admit or allow anyone to make an effective case that that emperor was and is naked as a jaybird.
Chiming in on Sean's comment on Instructors, throughout the 35+ years I have been instructing either HG or PG, I have witnessed many instructors who fail in developing and exercising safe judgment in and for their students.
Such an example just last week with a local HG Instructor who after witnessing the student exhibit "nose high" foot launches from the T-Hill the week prior, takes the student out to Scoot Tow. Sets the tow system up between teams of Soccer kids, applies aggressive tow tension on his student's first tow, sustains a low altitude (30' agl) weak link break.
The student pilot never responds with lowing his angle of attack, resulting in a severely broken arm.
So many failed judgment indicators jeopardizing the safety of the student pilot, as well as spectators in the area.
Support your local instructors who consistently exercise conservative judgment, take the time to develop competent pilots and grow our sport, so we all can benefit.
Wanna say anything about:
- the strength of the weak link?
- what its function was supposed to be?
- its appropriateness for the glider being flown?
- how well it performed as the focal point of a safe towing system?
- how well it functioned to increase the safety of the towing operation?
miguel wrote:I have had countless weaklink breaks and always had enough airspeed to make a decent landing.
Tad Eareckson wrote:Sorry lost interest right after:
I have had countless weaklink breaks...
That tells me that you're not a competent tow pilot and you're not flying at a competent tow operation. There is something damn close to ZERO excuse for EVER blowing a weak link in the course of a towing career.
Steve Davy wrote:
There is something damn close to ZERO excuse for EVER blowing a weak link in the course of a towing career.
Why is that so fuckin' hard for people to figure out?
Now, I am scared. Tag team action.
It is obvious that you all own your own tow rigs and use them exclusively.
When you are using someone else's rig, you either follow their procedures, warts and all, or find something else to do.
We do not use divine weak loops out here. If and when they start breaking, common sense prevails, and more loops are added until the weak links stop breaking.
If you are towing in strong gusty conditions, even one of Tad's magic loops might break.
miguel wrote:Not everyone buys into push out when your feet leave the ground.
Tad Eareckson wrote:NO competent pilot relying on a rope or engine to get airborne buys into push out when your feet or wheels leave the ground or glider leaves the dolly. Quote me saying anything to the contrary.
Bullshit. The name of the game is max altitude consuming the minimum amount of time. Youtube is full of it.
I towed behind a comp tug pilot. As soon as his wheels left the ground, he shot straight up like a Nike Ajax.
These were out in the woods where I grew up.
If the engine had died, there would have been two bloody wreckage piles at the end of the runway.
Same tug pilot was towing another pilot. Pilot came off cart too early. Engine on tug coughed and missed a couple times. Pilot hit the ground and got knocked out cold. Pilot got a helicopter ride.
Tad Eareckson wrote:All I'm saying is that if you're on a weak link or rope which fails when you push way the hell out - at any altitude - you and your driver are incompetent fucking morons who need your tickets suspended or revoked. A failed towline or weak link can kill you just as dead just as quickly as a frayed sidewire or...
Add a pinch of fiction into the fact stew and no one will ever know the difference.
We're not the ones you need to be scared of. You need to be scared shitless of the Trisa/Kroop/Pagen/Davis/Malcolm/Glover/Matt/Wendt/Elchin/Rooney/Tjaden scum that's running this show.
It is obvious that you all own your own tow rigs and use them exclusively.
Afraid not. Pretty much all the tow rigs and airports in this neck of the woods are controlled by the Flight Park Mafia. Same holds true for the vast majority of the population in this country. And ditto for Canada.
When you are using someone else's rig, you either follow their procedures, warts and all, or find something else to do.
When the person controlling the rig is a totally incompetent pigfucker a competent pilot finds something else to do.
This is aviation, dude. And lots of the tests are pass/fail with no retries. So competent pilots don't do warts - especially the malignant variety you're talking about.
We do not use divine weak loops out here.
Yeah, I know. Like I said:
That tells me that you're not a competent tow pilot and you're not flying at a competent tow operation.
If you ever decide to start becoming a competent tow pilot let me or Antoine know and one of us can set you up with divine weak links:
If and when they start breaking, common sense prevails, and more loops are added until the weak links stop breaking.
- If weak links start breaking the people in the operation are douchebags and common sense was dead in the water before the first glider was hooked up.
- If the strategy for dealing with breaking weak links is to beef them up until they stop breaking - although we've moved way up the evolutionary scale from Flight Park Mafia - we're still talking douchebags.
Adding a multitude of loops makes it impossible to spread the load evenly, and the link will likely bind up causing it to fail in an often unpredictable and unrepeatable manner. To ensure consistent breaking strengths, stacking equal length weaklinks works, using a single appropriate strength link is the best, and multiple wraps should never be used.
Even a shithead like Stuart Caruk is on board with that.
If you are towing in strong gusty conditions, even one of Tad's magic loops might break.
No. Tad uses, along with a release that doesn't stink on ice, a weak link slightly up from the middle of the range specified for sailplanes and - since 2004/09 - hang gliders.
Dr. Trisa Tilletti 1 - 2012/06
You and I have flown sailplanes for almost as long as we have flown hang gliders. We own two sailplanes and have two airplanes that we use for towing full-size sailplanes. In all the time that we have flown and towed sailplanes, we have not experienced or even seen a sailplane weak link break.
Dr. Trisa Tilletti 2 - 2012/06
Russell Brown, a founder of Quest Air in Florida and a well-known Dragonfly tug pilot, is also a sailplane pilot, tug pilot, and A&P mechanic for a large commercial sailplane towing operation in Florida. He told us that, like us, he has never seen a sailplane weak link break, either.
They don't break.
The name of the game is max altitude consuming the minimum amount of time.
The name of the game is being able to come back and fly NEXT weekend too.
We had six weaklink breaks in a row at Zapata this year. Russell Brown (tug pilot, tug owner, Quest Air owner) said go ahead and double up (four strands of Cortland Greenspot). He knows I used his Zapata weaklink in Big Spring (pilots were asked to tell the tug pilot if they were doing that).
What do these guys compete at anyway? Couldn't possibly be anything involving a thought process.
These were out in the woods where I grew up.
- Where are they now?
- Do you think they'd work for blowing Dragonflies out of the sky?
If the engine had died, there would have been two bloody wreckage piles at the end of the runway.
Would the upwind one look anything like this?
Same tug pilot was towing another pilot. Pilot came off cart too early. Engine on tug coughed and missed a couple times. Pilot hit the ground and got knocked out cold. Pilot got a helicopter ride.
- The ability to fly something does not make one a PILOT.
- There were no PILOTS involved in that operation.
- It's not clear whether the tug driver or glider diver took a chopper ride.
- But either way... Thank you for providing yet another example to illustrate my points.
Add a pinch of fiction into the fact stew and no one will ever know the difference.
What fiction?
Manned Kiting
The Basic Handbook of Tow Launched Hang Gliding
Daniel F. Poynter
1974
"Never take your hands off the bar." - Tom Peghiny
"The greatest dangers are a rope break or a premature release." - Richard Johnson
"A bad flyer won't hurt a pin man but a bad pin man can kill a flyer." - Bill Bennett
This stuff is solid and has been getting reaffirmed by crash and fatality reports since the beginning of time. You want fiction try some Hewett, Pagen, Bryden, Glover, Tilletti, Taber, Straub, Rooney, Voight, Axaopoulos, Kuczewski.
I have had countless weaklink breaks and always had enough airspeed to make a decent landing.
Great! That's absolute proof that you always will. There's no chance whatsoever that...
Wills Wing / Blue Sky / Steve Wendt / Ryan Voight Productions - 2007/03
NEVER CUT THE POWER...
...any of the really unpleasant things that we've documented here happening to OTHER people will ever happen to YOU. So you can continue to roll dice with your thrust at takeoff.
*A prudent pilot will develop good foot landing skills*
At a typical tow site your chances of getting getting seriously fucked up as a consequence of a Rooney Link failure are untold tens of thousands of times higher than getting fucked up as a consequence of a wheel landing.
Hell, at a typical tow site a typical flyer's chances of getting getting seriously fucked up as a consequence of a foot landing attempt are tens of thousands of times higher than getting fucked up as a consequence of a wheel landing.
I can name you seven tandem people killed in the course of three flights as a consequence of inadequate and/or abrupt loss of tow tension. The only tandem landing casualty I know about was the broken arm Greg DeWolf got at Manquin - and he was foot landing. EVERYBODY ELSE rolls in. Do the math.
Combine Rooney Links with foot launches and landings and...
We've been dealing with this Hewett based insanity for over thirty years now and we need all the help we can get from competent and prudent pilots to demolish the incompetent lying scum that's gained control of this sport. We've got tens of thousands of stupid Hassan and Hurless caliber clones reassuring people that Rooney Links are perfectly safe for competent and prudent pilots with well-trained brains.
P.S. You go up on Rooney Links behind tugs at Flight Park Mafia fields you are operating in violation of federal law.
You go up on Rooney Links at shit surface operations like the one the Phoenix assholes are running you set a miserable example for brainwashing victims like Bryan.
