Check your gas.

In article ,
Mike Ash wrote:

In article
,
a wrote:

Thanks for the discussion and all the info. While I don't know if it'll
ever be directly useful to me, it doesn't hurt to know, and it's all
very interesting.

Uh, Mike, that thing you're pushing on the other end of the tow rope
-- in spite of the push it does burn that gas stuff.

Oh yes! I didn't mean to imply that gas-burners weren't useful to me!
Rather, I simply meant that the tow pilots know way more about this sort
of thing than I do, and so I pretty much just have to trust them to get
things right. (The mutual trust goes both ways, as I could just as
easily get him killed as he could get me killed.)

Is there ever a time during a tow that you don't have enough energy to
get back to the field?

Yes there is, for a short period of time.

On a normal tow out of my field, there's a tense zone between about 50ft
and 150ft where I'm too high to land on the remaining runway and too low
to do a 180 back to the runway. If we're operating off runway 27,
there's a decent-looking field off the end that I could use in the event
of an emergency in that region, and it's *likely* that it would just be
a big inconvenience. Off runway 9, there are fields but nothing very
friendly, and it would probably ruin my day to have to go into one.

Aside from this short window, I'm fine. I still don't want to ha

So, I just discovered that my newsreader has a keyboard shortcut for
sending a message. I did not know this before!

Anyway, to continue....

I still don't want to have anything happen, because the tow plane's
ability to make it back to the airport is far less than my own, and the
guy flying it is probably a friend. And of course, I'd rather not have
to spontaneously test my emergency responses if I can help it (although
once I'm past 1,000ft or so, a premature termination of the tow isn't
really an emergency anymore). But for the bulk of the tow, it's more of
an indirect worry.

I've long ago lost the notion of flying around for 'fun', the airplane
has been a point to point tool, pretty much like a car is (that I
smile a lot when flying does NOT make it non-business). Now you have
me thinking all flying need not be expense account stuff. Should you
be thanked, or cursed?

That's a great question. Maybe you should go try some fun flying and
see.

--
Mike Ash
Radio Free Earth
Broadcasting from our climate-controlled studios deep inside the Moon