On Wednesday, May 13, 2020 at 11:05:05 AM UTC-7, jfitch wrote:
On Tuesday, May 12, 2020 at 6:29:37 PM UTC-7, 2G wrote:
On Tuesday, May 12, 2020 at 6:14:30 PM UTC-7, wrote:
What part of my solution didn't you guys understand? There's a fairly simply technological solution that circumvents human failings, and that is an automatically actuated tow release.

Great. Design it, build it, test it and get it approved. How hard could it be?

Put up or....

Yeah, sure. Just send me a million bucks and I will get right on it!

Tom

And therein lies the problem. A million for development, certification, and production is probably on the light side. With a worldwide lifetime market of maybe 200 units, if you achieve 20% market penetration. $5000 each would recover only costs. One false positive release resulting in an accident could wipe out the entire budget easily. Ain't going to happen.

Yeah, and these guys thought I was joking! The only way this can happen is if the engineering labor is donated. I am retired and can contribute, but I am not even close to a towplane. A lot of flight testing, some of it dangerous because it involves actual towplane upsets (albeit at altitude), would have to be done.

On the positive side, the cost of manufacturing such a unit would not be high, less than $500.

Tom