On Jul 11, 7:58*pm, Bart wrote:
On Jul 11, 2:38*pm, wrote:

On July 7, 2011 at Nowy Targ in southern Poland, glider Puchacz
crashed during training flight 2/3 mile from the airport. The
instructor (~64-67) and the student pilot (~18-19) are dead. *It was a
tow rope brake practice flight with down wind turn for down wind
landing from about 130-150 m of altitude (400 feet).
What can we learn from this?

Not much. Rope break at 400 feet should be a non-event. There must be
something about this accident that we do not know yet.

Are these training flights mendatory under FAA rules?
Can pilot request opt-out from "rope brake" during Biennial Flight
Review to avoid getting killed?

FARs do not require rope breaks during a flight review, so it is up to
the instructor you fly with. Personally, if I was an instructor, I
would not sign off anyone who is not comfortable flying a simulated
rope break. Weather permitting, of course.

By the way, what seems to be a typical BFR - three flights, one of
which is a rope break - is actually illegal. Or, to be more precise,
it does NOT met the BFR requirements specified by the FARs: "Glider
pilots may substitute a minimum of three instructional flights in a
glider, each of which includes a flight to TRAFFIC PATTERN ALTITUDE,
in lieu of the 1 hour of flight training required..."

Bart

This discussion reminds me of similar discussions surrounding spin
training in the power world. So many students and instructors were
killed during spin 'training' that the maneuver was eventually
banished from the required training curriculum. We in the soaring
community should be taking a very hard look at how many pilots are
injured killed in actual PTT (Premature Termination of Tow) events vs
how many are injured/killed in SRB (Simulated Rope Break) events. I
would be willing to bet real money that the statistics do not support
the continued use of SRBs in training and/or BFRs. We don't do base-
to-final turn stall/spin recovery training for obvious reasons (so the
saying goes, "You can only do a base-to-final-turn stall/spin
demonstration ONCE"), and SRBs are just slightly less dangerous.

BTW, at the risk of starting a religious war, rope breaks, spins, and
other dangerous maneuvers can be simulated realistically, at any
altitude and weather configuration in Condor. If we feel we must
continue to do SRBs as part of a training/review curriculum, they
should ONLY be done in Condor. The military, GA, and corporate/
airline communities figured this out a long time ago, and now that we
have a realistic soaring simulator, we should be doing it too. If you
haven't tried this in Condor, you should.

TA