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Old February 14th 18, 08:03 AM posted to rec.aviation.soaring
Frank Whiteley
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Default Minimum number of flights for winch sign off?

On Tuesday, February 13, 2018 at 10:45:18 PM UTC-7, Frank Whiteley wrote:
On Tuesday, February 13, 2018 at 8:42:33 PM UTC-7, b4soaring wrote:
On Tuesday, 13 February 2018 14:53:27 UTC, Waveguru wrote:
What would be the consensus for the minimum number of flights to get a ground launch sign off for an experienced glider pilot? How many cable breaks and at what altitude? Of course it would take more for some and less for others, but I would think at least 15 launches with 5 cable breaks at various heights?

Boggs


Basic principles of instruction:
-- ground briefing
-- instructor demonstration
-- student attempt

Winch launch failure instruction:
-- full climb, low level, land ahead
-- full climb, higher up, can't land ahead
-- full climb, random height, gradual power failure

That's a minimum of 6 launch failures. Where I'm from we also do an initial climb launch failure (pre full climb), instructor demo only (more training accidents than real accidents.) So that's an absolute minimum of 7 instructional launch failures.

The good news is that winch launching is really easy, easier than aerotowing. A competent pilot will learn to winch launch in 4 or 5 flights, so your 15 launch suggestion is do-able, but I would include more launch failures. For ab initio training we do a lot more launch failures before and after solo, just to reinforce the "expect a launch failure every launch" mindset.