TOW PLANE Accident

Have you ever lost close friends or family while they were acting as PIC?

There is powerful psychology at play. Wanting to believe that your friend or loved one was incapacitated is as normal as it gets.

T8


On Monday, March 11, 2019 at 10:07:23 PM UTC-4, Charlie Quebec wrote:
This is the post from reddit from the son of the pilot. He has actually seen the footage. Interestingly, he mentions health as a possible issue.
mrmrkester • 18d
The fatality in this accident was my father.

I have viewed the GoPro video in question a million times (doesn’t show impact) and to blame the accident solely on that doesn’t really make complete sense.

The towplane goes down by itself before the kiting really takes place. My dad was a pretty healthy guy but I’m more likely to believe in a medical issue before solely blaming the glider instructor. I’m not the NTSB so I won’t do their job, but it just doesn’t all add up.

Our Pawnee had the ability to cut the rope from the towplane end plus my dad makes no radio calls?

I’m a member of a different soaring club near my university and they tried replicating the accident (at altitude) and the tow pilot didn’t report much difficulty in controlling the Pawnee.

I’m a CFI-G myself, but if you ever lose sight of the towplane please release immediately. Had this pilot done this I’m not convinced the result would have been much different, but perhaps would have given my father a better chance of survival.

What we do carries an inherit risk, especially when flying behind a rope of someone else.

Please be safe out there.

Yes, I lost a friend in a tug accident. The evidence so far is open to several interpretations as far as Im concerned.

When I had the power loss mentioned earlier in this thread, my wife and
I pulled the releases almost simultaneously.Â* I did a "stick left, stick
right, release pull" and looked over my shoulder.Â* She was already
gone.Â* Later that day, another man and I went looking for the rope and
found it literally right off the end of the runway.

On 3/11/2019 7:31 PM, Roy B. wrote:
I'm curious as to how many clubs or tow pilots have really trained and cut a glider loose?
[You are going to lose a tow rope every time you do that]


Most tow pilots have talked about it but never experienced it in the heat of the moment.
[Thank you, God]

We pull an unexpected release on our glider students. When do the tug pilots get the same unexpected training?
[When you screw up back there. Ain't no instructor in the back seat of a Pawnee]

[ROY]

--
Dan, 5J

The video pause is common on most Sports cameras. I have an EKEN H8, and in the manual it says "...The camera will record 10min. clips and overwrite the earliest clip when the microSD card is full." My previous camera recorded in 5 min clips (I guess the memory was smaller). It is annoying but can be stitched together afterwards. I imagine the cam processor is not big enough to record video to memory and write to the microSD card simultaneously, so it stops recording, writes to the card, wipes internal memory, then restarts recording. I'm told that the length of video clips is longer on cams like GoPro.

On Saturday, March 23, 2019 at 8:56:54 AM UTC-6, Dan Daly wrote:
The video pause is common on most Sports cameras. I have an EKEN H8, and in the manual it says "...The camera will record 10min. clips and overwrite the earliest clip when the microSD card is full." My previous camera recorded in 5 min clips (I guess the memory was smaller). It is annoying but can be stitched together afterwards. I imagine the cam processor is not big enough to record video to memory and write to the microSD card simultaneously, so it stops recording, writes to the card, wipes internal memory, then restarts recording. I'm told that the length of video clips is longer on cams like GoPro.

My GoPro Hero 4 Silver records about 17min clips, but they do stitch together seamlessly, without any gaps. The camera does not stop recording unless the battery dies or the memory card fills up, which is different than what reportedly happened in this accident.

In regard to the 10/7/2017 low level tow plane crash/fatality, the final
NTSB report has now been published.

The report confirmed that the Pawnee had a Tost reel installed and
that the weak link had not failed as designed, rather the tow rope
itself broke. Additionally the report clarified that the tow planes
guillotine had not been activated and no weak link was recovered.

The NTSB metallurgist report states the following regarding the tow
rope, but no determination as to the rope mfg name or rope strength.

The received section of tow rope was visually and microscopically
examined in the NTSB Materials Laboratory.The as�received rope was
separated at one end and intentionally cut at the other as show in
attached image 1711Image57402. The ¼ inch diameter rope had a
braided outer layer covering approximately 13 twisted inner strands.
Magnified inspection of the separation found mushroomed fiber ends
and partially fused strands indicative of adiabatic heating resulting
from high strain rate overstress separations of synthetic fiber ropes.
The longest strands were twisted as if they were part of a knot at the
time of separation. A dark band with a metallic sheen was visible on
the braided cover adjacent to the separation, see attached image
1711Image57407. A hand held x�ray alloy analyzer revealed
significant amounts of aluminum in the darkest part of the band.

The docket did not include any line crew statements in regard to what
weak link may have been used for the tow.

A reasonable question for those World-Wide operations that use Tost
reels, would be. Is it uncommon for tow ropes to break, rather than
a prescribed weak link. If this was a rare anomaly, is there
some logical reason for it happening?

M Eiler

On Sunday, March 24, 2019 at 12:30:03 PM UTC-4, soarin wrote:
In regard to the 10/7/2017 low level tow plane crash/fatality, the final
NTSB report has now been published.

The report confirmed that the Pawnee had a Tost reel installed and
that the weak link had not failed as designed, rather the tow rope
itself broke. Additionally the report clarified that the tow planes
guillotine had not been activated and no weak link was recovered.

The NTSB metallurgist report states the following regarding the tow
rope, but no determination as to the rope mfg name or rope strength.

The received section of tow rope was visually and microscopically
examined in the NTSB Materials Laboratory.The as�received rope was
separated at one end and intentionally cut at the other as show in
attached image 1711Image57402. The ¼ inch diameter rope had a
braided outer layer covering approximately 13 twisted inner strands.
Magnified inspection of the separation found mushroomed fiber ends
and partially fused strands indicative of adiabatic heating resulting
from high strain rate overstress separations of synthetic fiber ropes.
The longest strands were twisted as if they were part of a knot at the
time of separation. A dark band with a metallic sheen was visible on
the braided cover adjacent to the separation, see attached image
1711Image57407. A hand held x�ray alloy analyzer revealed
significant amounts of aluminum in the darkest part of the band.

The docket did not include any line crew statements in regard to what
weak link may have been used for the tow.

A reasonable question for those World-Wide operations that use Tost
reels, would be. Is it uncommon for tow ropes to break, rather than
a prescribed weak link. If this was a rare anomaly, is there
some logical reason for it happening?

M Eiler

It is very common for a Tost reel rope to break before a white weak link (500daN) breaks. The slug on the glider end is anchored by a single overhand knot in the rope inside the slug, and with the strain from that knot, the rope is slightly weaker than the weak link. In the eight years that I towed with the system, we never broke a weak link, usually broke the rope right in front of the weak link.

Is it uncommon for tow ropes to break, rather than
a prescribed weak link. If this was a rare anomaly, is there
some logical reason for it happening?

We used the Tost reel system for many years on 2 tow planes and had the same experience: the ropes always broke near the weak link covering but not at the weak link. I suspect the issue is both the knot in the device and the constant flailing of the device and flexing of the rope near the weak link as it is rewound into the holder. We later abandoned the system.
ROY