Please forgive my unfamiliarity with kiting, but can someone explain what goes so wrong that a pilot does not release as soon as he/she loses slight of tow plane. In 1500 plus hours of flying out of the mountains in the western US, including many tows out of Minden through the rotor to the laminar.. For the life of me I cannot see how a glider can kite so bad that they kill a tow pilot. Only once while low in the White Mountains, have I even run out of elevator control versus force of nature. Out of Minden twice I have had to release on tow in rotor, just because I lost slight of tow plane. What goes so wrong in a kitting accident that the glider cannot control the kite nor releases as soon as the tow goes out of sight under the nose? I am not being flippant or insensitive, I truly am not sure how a pilot gets into such a kitting.

On Monday, October 16, 2017 at 6:29:08 PM UTC-7, Andreas Maurer wrote:
On Mon, 16 Oct 2017 01:17:26 -0700 (PDT), krasw
wrote:


Statistical data would be like "we have a group of Std.Cirrus gliders with nosehook and similar group with C/G hook, and we can say that this group exhibits XX accidents during tow per 100000 hrs, and other group YY accidents per 100000 hrs". Or something to that effect.

100% agree.

For 25 years my club has had two DG-300: One with nose hook and one
without. We had exactly one incidence where a DG-300 got the tow plane
out of control by pulling up its tail.

It was the one with the nose hook.