On Sunday, March 17, 2019 at 8:53:46 AM UTC-7, Dan Marotta wrote:
Hmmmmm...Â* I'd say either don't let your wife pull the trailer or else
have HER hook it up to the car. :-D

On 3/17/2019 2:12 AM, mskoe.... il.com wrote:
"...how many of you have had a trailer break away from
the tow vehicle and what was the cause?"

SNIPPED
The trailer turned to the left, probably driven off by the last of the two hooks to break, threaded it way across the other 3 lanes of traffic and wandered out into the desert. This time I did hear about it. I turned around and came back to land at a nearby airport.


Whew.

Fran's got more miles/hours in front of a glider trailer than most readers of RAS have in their logbooks. She knows how to hook'em up, but expects the PIC to do a preflight of all the equipment. Rightly so.

I can think of two other self-launching trailers.....but I am not familiar enough to know the specific causes. I would lay the first flyer on the repetitive event of Lots of Miles and Wear on the attachment ball. Henry Combs' custom trailer launched over an embankment on the downhill slope through Red Rock Canyon on a return leg. No one injured but N301Q. Both the glider and trailer were back in service after appropriate care. Mike might know about safety chains on that one. The tow car had logged around 300,000 crew miles.

And a Region 12 contest around 1988 or so, Trip Mellinger's trailer speared across northbound traffic and attacked a gas station wall in Mojave. That was probably a very early Komet trailer, attached by someone other than the pilot and left the airfield with an impromptu indentured crew. (All my suppositions.... )

I know there is a Charlie Spratt tale of a trailer that spent a long set of hours waiting in a grassy median for the bleary-eyed crew to make the next gas stop. Then they got to backtrack to find said detached-loiterer . . . ..

So.
It happens. More often than we would like. Preflight before you pull out the drive. One more walk around. Those two minutes save a lot of heartache. And the pre-spring maintenance underview also saves a lot of angst and expense.

Best to all,
Cindy