I expected someone will come up sooner or later with the lame request
to wait for the "official accident report". It is comments like this
which often prevent useful discussions about accidents and how to
prevent them. I for one learned much more about accidents from RAS
then from "official accident reports". Are you referring to the
usually useless NTSB reports, or to accident reports in the soaring
magazine which may take months or years to come if at all? We had too
many fatalities this year yet I don't recall seeing any "official
accident reports". Meanwhile more could die from the same reasons.
I'm with Kirk and also hope that if something will ever happen to me
people will discuss it right away and try to learn from it.

Ramy

On Aug 28, 1:00*pm, Mark Wright wrote:
Why can'ty you vultures just wait for the official accident report instead
of using unbased hypothesis and dragging it all out for the bereaved who
may also be reading this string ?

*Shame on you

MW

At 21:37 27 August 2009, Jim Logajan wrote:



Jim Logajan *wrote:
"Larry Goddard" *wrote:
In looking at a video shot earlier in the day of a glider launch, it
appeared to me that the pawnee was not climbing very well...
Creswell elevation is only 540 feet. *And the temperature only got up
to the low 70's that day.
http://www.kval.com/news/local/54613062.html

Yes - the climb angle does appear low - at least compared to last year
when we launched off an 1890 foot grass airstrip (OG48) with the same
tow plane and glider (but different tow pilot.) The asphalt airfield
(77S) you see in that video is 3100 feet.

I need to correct myself: the tow plane that crashed is _not_ the same
one

that was used to tow the glider last year. The tow plane that I flew
behind
last year was a Lycoming O-540 (235 HP) powered Pawnee. The tow plane in
the video is a Lycoming O-320 (160 HP) powered Pawnee. That is why the
takeoff looked "anemic" to me. My perception was colored by only seeing
tows behind the higher powered Pawnee. The takeoff in the video is normal
for that Pawnee.

Since I never got around to seeing any of the takeoffs at the new runway,
and because I recalled Scott telling me last fall that he was interested
in
possibly buying the 235 HP Pawnee, I incorrectly assumed that he had
bought
that one. Obviously I hadn't kept up to date.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -