New student pilot apprehensions

In article
,
Michael wrote:

The tow rope keeps me up at night. Aerotow freaks me out. With my
inexperience in coordinated flight, I am terrified that these
oscillations I get into will upset the tow plane (and pilot). I feel
I¹m doing this left bank, right bank, over correct, left, right, left
rightŠ. I know my instructor is back there. This stuff does get
easier doesn¹t it? I mean 14 year-olds do thisŠ. (I¹m 33.) My last
instructor (I¹m in a gliding club in which we have a different
instructor each week), demonstrated boxing the wake and I was sure the
rope was going to breakŠ.but it didn¹t, even going through the prop
wash of the tow plane.

Others have talked about this but I just wanted to add my own emphasis.
Your instructor is going to keep the three of you safe. (You, him, tow
pilot.) You may annoy the tow pilot, but he should understand that
you're a student and are going to be doing some funky things back there.
If he doesn't, well, don't sweat it. It's expected that you're going to
give him a workout until you've had more practice.

As for breaking the rope, it's really hard, and except for a very narrow
band close to the ground it's not a big deal. (Depending on your
location even that narrow band may not be a big deal.) I've seen and
done some really terrible abuse to the tow rope and never seen one
actually break. Being badly out of position won't come close. I've hit
the end real hard after generating slack and it held. In the US, the
minimum legal rope strength is 80% of your glider's max gross weight.
Depending on what you're flying, that figure is likely to be in the
neighborhood of 1000lbs. Normal forces on the rope during tow are likely
to be more like 50lbs. That's a 20x safety factor for you to play with.

Practice will make perfect. Keep at it, and one day soon you'll look
back and wonder how you ever had any trouble with this.

--
Mike Ash
Radio Free Earth
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