On Wednesday, February 20, 2019 at 6:59:06 PM UTC-6, Nick Kennedy wrote:
My take after reading the NTSB report is the glider pilot looked away to adjust a GoPro, Got High on the tow early and drove the tug into the ground..
Does this sound correct?
God Damn it. These are easily preventable accidents.
Killing Tow Pilots like this is very bad form.
When I was towing I'd look pilots in the eye that I didn't know and say " If you get high on me your getting rope, immediately." Got it?

No, this does not sound correct to me. I think a lot of people are jumping to conclusions unwarranted. Read it a bit closer! First, the pilot, and instructor, was in the back seat and the "passenger" was in the front seat with the camera. The pilot did not touch the camera and it has nothing to do with the accident as I read it. Are you suggesting the instructor let the passenger fly the tow? That would be the first cause of the accident if I were writing the report. There are many other examples of assumptions being made that I don't have time to go into, but one, my gopro stops the video and starts the video after a certain duration, that start and stop could have been done automatically by the camera, and two " Based on the glider altimeter readings that can be seen in the videos, the glider climbed about 50 ft during this time, from 890 to 940 ft msl. Video analysis showed that the tow plane altitude relative to the glider decreased by 63 ft during these 13 seconds (based on an estimated tow rope length of 160 ft).", does not sound like a glider pulling the towplane down. Perhaps the towplane descended dramatically after that for some other reason. Regardless, it is in no way conclusive that the glider pulled the towplane down. I have no idea what is likely and I'm not going to presume. Most of the time we all talk about how inaccurate/uninformed the NTSB reports are,why is it different here?