On Monday, October 5, 2015 at 10:11:57 AM UTC-4, wrote:


All the winches I flew on in Europe had guillotines to cut the cable in an emergency (mandated in Germany). How do you do that with cars? I witnessed a near fatal accident with hanglider being towed by a car where the pilot flew a neat arc that ended with an impact. When I asked the person on the bed of the towing pickup how he had planned to sever the rope in such an event, he showed me his pocket knife!

We had a very nice rig for that. The car end had Schweizer tow release mounted on a steel plate. The plate was hinged for freedom in the vertical axis. The plate and associated structure was mounted on a ball coupling that rode on the car's towball, allowing freedom in the horizontal axis. The rig had the usual Schweizer release rope (same as a towplane), so the back seat observer held the release rope in his hand and pulled it in an emergency. We also had a crash-ax mounted in back as an extra safety measure.