Hello Andreas Maurer, you wrote at 07.28.2011 03:21

On Wed, 27 Jul 2011 03:06:29 -0700 (PDT), "
wrote:

Radios reliable??? Funny, my job for today (I work for avionics
shop) is to find out what's wrong with 4 glider's radios for a local
club......

Sometimes I wonder why things that work all over the world don't seem
to work in the US... like radios in gliders.

A failed radio is pretty much unknown in the part of the world where I
live. I didn't know that German technology was that far advanced.

in which part of the german world ;-) do you live?

At my gliding club here in northern Germany we have had severeal
failures of radios in our gliders over the last years. Disconnected
speaker, stuck transmit button, electric installation failure, and so
on. None of them causing a fatality or even an accident, fortunately.

Think your statistics ain't representative ... :-)

On my airfield a radio call stopped a pilot from ruining his day twice
within the last six weeks.

Huh - the *same* pilot?

Says a lot about the pilot

[sigh] ... the same pilot ... :-/

- but he's the type of guy who would be a
typical candidate to confuse rudder waggle and release unexpectedly.

So how he managed not to misunderstand the radio calls? ;-

I agree, radios are rather reliable, but your eyes are more. And under
bad circumstances a radio call may be poorly readable, misunderstood,
.... so two simple signals (rudder wag / wing rock) should be safer. But
the accidents corresponding with them *did* occur ...

I don't have the solution. In my opinion one should:

1. give no signal before misinterpretation is not likely to be harmful
(i.E. before sufficient height is gained), whenever possible

2. if necessary, give a radio call (like "glider on tow, check your
airbrakes") /followed/ by the corresponding signal (rudder wag)

.... risk of misinterpretation should be less, then.

Just my 2 ct.

regards
Werner