Standardization in Slack Rope Recovery?

On 2/2/2016 5:16 PM, wrote:
A long, long time ago I did some instructing for a club at a major
university in the Boston area. Part of the checkout flight with them
included a slack rope demo.

The check pilot described it and then performed it: climb up above normal
high tow position, then dive on the towplane and move out to one side until
a big loop of slack forms (in this case, it disappeared behind and under
the wing, although we were well out to the side by then). To recover, hold
position out to the side and allow the speed to bleed off; watch for the
loop to reappear; and then dive slightly and turn in behind the towplane to
match the speed as the slack comes out.

The check pilot's attempt was "OK", although eye opening when I watched the
amount of loose rope go back behind the glider and the reappear some
seconds later.

"Now you try it." So I did. With about the same modest success. It wasn't a
smooth synchronization of speed with the towplane but we didn't break the
rope. "OK, uh, that's good enough."

It turned out that the local designated examiner, an experienced glider
pilot, required this maneuver, which I never encountered again. Years later
I recall reading about a fatal training accident in the area, the details
about which were sketchy but that seemed to resonate unhappily with that
day.

It remains one of those experiences that I'm sort of glad I had but which I
would never intentionally repeat or ask anyone else to.

Chip Bearden


Freely associating...your experience brings back memories!

To the point of "doing it the way the instructor requests," once
(U.S.-centric) BFRs became mandated, my approach was to ask the CFIG what
removal technique they wanted, before actually practicing slack removal, and -
if it was different from what I'd been initially taught - tried to do it as
they requested, rationalizing learning was learning.

That approach generally worked to our mutual satisfaction, though my two
ugliest and alarming-to-me instructional scenarios came on BFRs - yup, slack rope!

The first occurred when I was near the top of my game, and the "I'll demo-bow"
put into the rope by the instructor was H-U-G-E, below and well behind the
Twin Grob wing's trailing edge as seen by me from the front seat. I was
thoroughly and alarmingly impressed! From the rear seat, the instructor lost
sight of the loop and sensibly requested verbal "Howzitgoin'?" input from me
until he once again had the rope entirely in sight. Since it was his demo, it
was a no-brainer to let him undo what he had wrought, though - years before
"scenario based training" became popular in USA training-land - I'll admit to
quickly imagining, "How best to quickly and unequivocally obtain PIC handoff
if this starts to go *really* bad?" Happily, intervention wasn't necessary,
though I think we were both amazed the rope didn't break. After a short period
of reverential silence, to his credit the CFIG admitted, "(shaky laugh)I may
have overdone that."

The other came one early spring when I wasn't so on top of my game, then
soaring mostly at summer camps rather than year 'round. Another
instructor-created big bow, which he wanted me to remove via the "dive and
match speeds" method - performed-by-me only on BFRs - and my speed matching,
didn't. You really can permanently lose a 200' rope within a half-mile of the
airport; it broke simultaneously at both ends; the retained Tost ring set in
the nose proved it to the peanut gallery...likely an interesting
internal-to-the-rope shock effect. He signed off on the BFR on the (honest)
grounds I "never got slack in the rope, and was obviously out of practice."

I'd hope the "never get slack in the rope" becomes a universal truism for
everyone with increasing stick time, but in fact the more I flew, the more
difficult for me it was to demonstrate slack removal skills, simply because "I
never had any to deal with." Unused skills tend to diminish...

Sometimes the things we learn exceed those we set out to!

Bob W.