Winch Signals

On Thu, 09 Apr 2009 21:00:08 +0000, John Galloway wrote:

The UK verbal launch signals are said once in my experience

Only in some clubs. Mine repeats the phrase continuously during that
phase of the launch but with a pause at the end of each repetition. This
makes them unambiguous despite background and/or wind noise. The back
channel is the light on the winch, which has three states:

- off: winch is stopped or out of gear. Cable is safe to handle.
- flashing: winch is in gear, cable is live and must not be touched
or approached
- continuously on: the winch driver has stopped or is holding the launch.
The launch marshal will use the radio to find out why the stop light
is on.

similar vein -it had never occurred to me before but only a couple of
weeks ago it was pointed out to me by Don Irving (Chairman of the BGA
Instructors committee) that the best reason for sticking to them is
similar to Gavin's point:

Take up slack = 3 words
All Out = 2 words
Stop = 1 word

Agreed. I think the exact phrase is important vecause all three are quite
distinctive.

We have a hump in the middle of our field and so we use radio on a
dedicated channel to control winch launches.

Before the launch starts the winch driver is told who the pilot is, the
glider registration and type and which cable is to be used. This is
repeated back to the launch marshal for confirmation.

The pilot accepts the cable when he is ready to be launched and control
passes to the launch marshal for the rest of the launch unless the pilot
releases the cable. If there's an external hold the cable is also
released, this time under the launch marshal's direction.

When the launch marshal has checked and announced all is clear above and
behind he radios:

"winch, for the [TYPE] glider on your [left/right] cable, take up
slack ... take up slack ...", repeating the last phrase until the cable
is tight. Then he changes to:

"all out ... all out ... all out ... " until the glider is high enough to
be clearly visible to the winch driver, at which point transmission
ceases.

If anybody at the launch point sees an emergency developing he can stop
the launch by alerting the launch marshal, who changes his call to

"stop ... stop ... stop".

As you can see, the sound of the three calls is quite distinct, even over
wind noise on the mic and the sound of the winch. Most launch marshals
also emphasize the spoken rhythms to make the phrases as different as
possible.

That's for the winch. We use the same calls for an aero tow, prefixed
with the tug's call sign since this is a shared frequency but without any
repetition except that the stop call would still probably be "stop stop
stop".


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martin@ | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
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