Kaluzhin Release as Primary w/ 2 Pt. Bridle Setup

[Dave Gills]

From what I've seen at the tow park, all Falcons, Eagles and about 1/2 of the S2 pilots use a 2 point setup.
It appears U2 & T2 pilots are comfortable enough flying in the low 30 mph range with a 1 point.

I think pilots who are either learning AT or who have low hours behind a tug may benefit from a hands free release more than they will be inhibited by its increased drag.

The modified Kaluzhin can be restored to its original configuration easily for those who later seek a higher level of performance.

[Tad Eareckson]

From what I've seen at the tow park, all Falcons, Eagles and about 1/2 of the S2 pilots use a 2 point setup.

- Which 95 percent of them refer to as THREE point setups.

- And about the same percentage use easily reachable Industry Standard releases.

- What's left over from that use crap from Lockout Mountain Flight Park that isn't warranted as suitable for towing anything.

- And around a hundred percent of them use bent pin backup and pro toad releases.

- And until the beginning of the 2013 season 100.0 percent of them were using single loops of 130 pound test fishing line as the focal points of their safe towing systems.

It appears U2 & T2 pilots are comfortable enough flying in the low 30 mph range with a 1 point.

- And how wonderful it is that they can predict what their maximum airspeeds will be while they're lying on the carts waiting to be hooked up. Reminds me a lot of:

http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=22540
LMFP release dysfunction

Diev Hart - 2011/07/14 17:19:12 UTC

I have had issues with them releasing under load. So I don't try to release it under a lot of load now.

Hang gliding's a really great flavor of aviation for pilots who don't like moving air fucking up their assumptions and theories.

- Name some deadly shit that most of the assholes in this sport AREN'T "comfortable" with - and screaming at the tops of their lungs makes them safer and needs to be universally implemented and enforced.

I think pilots who are either learning AT or who have low hours behind a tug may benefit from a hands free release more than they will be inhibited by its increased drag.

AND - more importantly - they'll start becoming acclimated to flying with half-assed towing equipment and developing the mindset that if there were anything better out there that actually worked everybody would already be using it everywhere. (Not to denigrate your contribution here but this is a slap-on solution for an absolutely critical issue which should've been standard VG system quality three decades ago.)

The modified Kaluzhin can be restored to its original configuration easily for those who later seek a higher level of performance.

Thus bypassing any and all interest in pursuing anything comparable to what all sailplanes have had and taken for granted since the beginning of time. "What, we want a clean high performance wing and harness AND a clean, high performance, safe system for getting us to thermalling altitude? Get real dude."

OK team... We need to get the word out on this issue.

I see the risk as pretty microscopic 'cause you need to get a failure, and we've only heard of one, lining up with a low level lockout crisis. And low level aerotow lockout crises with Industry Standard equipment virtually always end up with dead or seriously mangled passengers. And we hear about all of them and they're extremely rare.

But none of us is gonna feel great if a newbie who's never heard of Kite Strings or somebody who doesn't speak English gets trashed due to this issue.

So we need to post on mainstream forums. BUT... We wanna legitimize these motherfuckers and their cesspools as little as possible. So just post the link and topic name:

http://www.kitestrings.org/topic88.html
ADVISORIES

and maybe call the topic "AT release advisory" and record the time stamp and URL. And then if/when Davis, Jack, any other of these dickheads wanna delete it - LET 'EM. Let THEM bear some responsibility for killing the next sixteen year old AT student and let Kite Strings be the association that did everything within its power. That's the best strategy in the big picture and long run.

[<BS>]

Basically it does this...



Imagine now, where the bare cable is in this picture, there is in its place the housing that has slipped forward.

Easy fix really...
Weld a cable stop to the quick link.

Another bit I'd like to see is an easy way to take the cable out and lubricate it.
Cables have a nasty habit of corroding.
He is using JagWire CEX housing which is pretty good.
Also maybe a smoother stranded cable for less friction like the kind used for bicycle derailleurs.

It still isn't a hands free device
We could discuss improvments to the Ford Pinto if you like.

What causes the cable housing to move forward to compress the spring and what holds it in place? Don't you pretty much have to go through the motions of actuation every time you connect it?

[Tad Eareckson]

Awkward thread. Initiated to illustrate Dave's two point application of the Russian release, Joe's release mentioned as an option with a pretty much identical safety margin, secondhand and essentially erroneous report of a potentially lethal catastrophic failure of Joe's release, thread evolves into a discussion about the presumed issue with Joe's release, "ADVISORIES" topic created as a response to the essentially nonexistent critical issue with Joe's release and splits the discussion, then verification that there is no actual issue with Joe's release.

What causes the cable housing to move forward to compress the spring and what holds it in place?

Short answer: Nothing.

Don't you pretty much have to go through the motions of actuation every time you connect it?

Nah, you're just gonna squeeze the flanges together.

Besides actuating the release under zero load on the ground in order to connect the bridle is not the same as actuating the release under normal or max / weak link load in the air in order to DISconnect the bridle.

Reminds me of one of the biggest scams run by u$hPa and the Aerotowing Industry. As part of his preflight the responsible focused pilot always makes the easy reach to the bicycle brake lever velcroed onto his starboard control tube actuates his release under zero to thirty pounds of "bridal" end "pressure". This ensures that he'll be able to safely, reliably, quickly blow tow in a low level lockout at the five hundred pounds of towline pressure u$hPa now recommends for AT weak links. (Any comment on THAT false sense of security, Tom Galvin?)

Joe Street - 2015/11/07 14:01:02 UTC

I asked John to return the release to me and I'll send him a brand new one. I don't want that old model in circulation. I can imagine one day it might fall into someone else's hands who decides to take the hose clamps off to avoid sail abrasion...

And we'd wanna retain some vegetable who'd do something like that in hang gliding in particular and the gene pool in general because?

I don't caution people not to flip the barrel release pin through the loop or eye.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/psucvollibre/5935859745/


I show them and tell them how to do things right and if they feel like getting creative... Fine. Knock yourselves out.

2011/01/15 - Shane Smith. "Let's remove the tow ring from the end of the towline and run the stupidly snaggy bridle through the appropriate weak link loops." Thank you, Charles Darwin. There's just so much stupidity this sport can absorb and we were pretty saturated thirty years ago. (And note that those surviving sleazy Phoenix motherfuckers didn't provide any photos illustrating the two issues - bridle locked in the focal point of their safe towing system and cut towline end tied to the turnaround pulley - that sealed that unfortunate idiot's fate.)

Compare/Contrast what Joe's doing with/to:

http://www.kitestrings.org/topic19.html
LMFP Release Dysfunction

Matt Taber and his off-the-scale sleazy operation.

Yet another application of hang gliding's inverse-square law: The integrity of equipment engineering and concern for the wellbeing of the user is inversely proportional to the square of the direct and indirect profit one is making from the equipment.

- Sell mass produced junk with the biggest price tag you think you can get away with to hundreds of trusting and brainwashed newbies at your huge monopolistic commercial tow operation, you:

-- make sure your victims don't see until after the sales are complete the fuckin' manual which informs them that the mass produced junk isn't warranted as suitable for towing anything and if they're not happy about it they can go play checkers

-- watch idly as it fails left and right, kills someone every now and then

-- ignore communications from your surviving victims until a major stink is made on international forums and then pretend you never received the communications

-- lie about having had a bad batch run

-- pretend to fix the problem while doing NOTHING

- A recreational pilot with no commercial interests and the desire and competence to address a deadly issue operating at cost or a major loss busts ass to do everything right and immediately jumps all over any issue that comes to his attention.

[<BS>]

Nah, you're just gonna squeeze the flanges together.

That's what I meant, the release going through the motions such that you would notice if the cable housing was moving forward and restricting the amount of movement. If the cable housing was so far forward it would prevent release, wouldn't it also be too far forward to connect to the bridle?

[Tad Eareckson]

Yeah, this was a "failure" on the ground, quickly dealt with by a couple of little hose clamps.

http://www.kitestrings.org/post8644.html#p8644

I'm guessing that even if you didn't fix the problem and just shoved the housing back as required each time you'd be OK. (Not that that would be a great way to run an airline but if you never had a failed release in normal operations it's highly unlikely that you'd have one in a critical situation.)

But John's "solution" was to go with a release that's known to fail left and right for all kinds of reasons. Snag on the spinnaker shackle gate, crappy load to actuation ratio, cable binding, critical adjustment, brake lever bottoming out on tubing...