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41 years ago I joined the Vultures club in Michigan, a winch only club
where I learned to fly gliders and soar. It was interesting how often a couple of circles after releasing resulted in a gain in altitude. It seems that the turbulence of the tow often released a thermal. Our tows were fifty cents and did we bitch when it went up to seventy five cents. It is too bad that so many influential pilots in the US have been knocking winch towing for such a long time. I would guess that half my aero tows at the 2005 Sports Class Nationals were more difficult than my typical winch tow. Taking off with a quartering tailwind, flying through gusts that blew me across the runway, 50 ft above the ground at the end of the runway and making a slow turn to avoid home sites at 50 knots is not my idea of fun. The tow pilots were fantastic, the line crews were great, the tasking was extraordinary, interesting and challenging and every day was a different challenge. John Good, the CD was not a magician, he was a wizard at setting tasks with the aid of Sam Zimmerman and the task advisers john Sinclair and Walt Cannon. It was one hell of a contest, probably the best run and organized that it has been my privilege to fly. mg Bill Daniels wrote: "Kilo Charlie" wrote in message news:9D3we.3579$Qo.3471@fed1read01... Your input re winch launches is appreciated Bill....esp for those of us that have never done one! Please don't take this as a criticism of winch launches but through this thread there has not been any mention of what happens at the critical low level altitude when the cable breaks. There is clearly also a zone of real problems with aerotows too.....esp here in the desert with few, if any landing options straight ahead. What do you guys teach re breaks at 100 feet? It seems like landing ahead would be good but how much altitude does it take to regain the necessary speed to be able to control the glider for landing when at a high angle of attack? Sorry if this is too obvious for those of you that do it all the time! Casey Thanks, Casey. The climb profile must be such that a safe recovery with generous margins be possible from any height that a cable break occurs. Safety is the product of airspeed, altitude and attitude - and good training. If the break happens at 100 feet, then 90%+ of the runway lies ahead to receive the glider. At 100 feet, the glider will have full climb airspeed, approx. 60 knots, but then pitch attitude will only be 20 - 30 degrees. A prompt, gentle pushover to a glide at approach airspeed is all that is needed to land straight ahead. If the break occurs higher, say 300 - 400 feet, then the straight ahead landing is still possible with spoilers but a tight 360 pattern is also possible. The two options overlap by a good amount of height depending on the airfield. At this height, the climb attitude will be about 45 degrees nose up (although from the cockpit it will feel like 60 degrees) so a more aggressive pushover is needed. All these situations will be practiced over and over until the instructor feels the student reacts instinctively and correctly to each. The student must firmly push the nose down until the airspeed is observed to be at a safe value and increasing before establishing a glide for a straight ahead landing or a turn for an abbreviated pattern. I must admit that winch launch LOOKS scary and FEELS scary to the uninitiated but the procedures worked out over literally tens of millions of launches in Europe and elsewhere make it actually safer than air tow. As for releasing over the winch instead of wherever the tow plane takes you, I see by looking at a lot of On-Line Contest IGC files, that most air tow releases happen within a mile of the takeoff point and the glider is rarely in a thermal at release but must glide around looking for one just like with a winch launch. If you don't find a thermal, a winch re-light will cost you less than $10. The latest European winches are getting even heavy gliders to over 1000 meters AGL so finding lift shouldn't be a problem. Bill Daniels |
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