advice please!!
Steve... SHOVE IT.Steve Seibel - 2013/02/25 17:04:53 UTC
Willamette Valley
control inputs on tow
One of the first things you'll learn is that on aerotow, it's ok if your shoulders move more than your hips/feet when you make a roll correction. Keep your arms loose and allow this to happen. In prone free flight, we learn how to not cross-control, how to make sure our body stays parallel to the keel (shoulders and hips/feet all move the same amount), or sometimes we "lead with the feet" so that the feet and hips move more than the shoulders.
On tow the physics are different and this is just wasted muscle effort. Keep your arms loose and don't fight the tendency to lead with your shoulders as you make roll inputs.
In other words, move the bar sideways but don't exert any twisting torque on it, as you would need to do if you wanted to "lead with your feet". Don't try to control yaw, either of your body or of the glider (two sides of the same coin.) Keep it loose.
Like you said below, that's a good way to put it. No "shopping cart" inputs.
They'll show you all this as you hang in a glider with someone pulling in the towline, before you ever go flying.
Steve
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Last edited by aeroexperiments on 2013/02/25 17:53:00 UTC
http://vimeo.com/33381400
TakeoffForCartPosition
S S - 2011/12/09 03:10
dead
99.999 percent of the time on aerotow you can wallow all over the fuckin' sky and it WON'T MATTER.
So before we get into all this fine points bullshit we need to look at the 0.001 percent of the time when control is CRITICAL.
The two times when control is critical are when the glider's:
- going up like a rocket
- locking out
(And those to situations are NOT mutually exclusive so we have ALL KINDS of potential for a really fun flight!)
In the first situation you're not gonna have any control whatsoever for at least a very long time after your Rooney Link pops 'cause you're gonna be in a severe stall. So how 'bout we talk about replacing the Rooney Links with stuff that's both legal and safe?
In the second situation you're gonna need to be doing TWO things SIMULTANEOUSLY in order to survive:
- continuously resisting the lockout with everything you've got; and
- aborting the tow.
It takes TWO hands two do the former and ONE hand to do the latter so unless you have three hands you better configure your release system such that one of your hands can do both jobs at the same time.
Think of it as if your life may be suddenly dependent upon both walking and chewing gum. If the gum's stuck to the bottom of your shoe you're gonna hafta interrupt your walking while you try to retrieve it.
So why don't you just use a plenty big enough piece of gum to satisfy the requirement and keep it in your fucking mouth for the four minute duration of the exercise?
P.S. Also note that the less input you're able to exert to resist a lockout and the longer it takes you to abort it the longer you're gonna hafta wait before further control input is gonna do anything you want (need) it to.
