Fatal Towplane Accident 5-9-20

On 6/1/2020 2:41 PM, Neal Alders wrote:

Some snipping/cutting/inserting below...but first, some personal bloviating
context of my own. (Sorry! It's pretty much unavoidable, IMHO...)

First, I *love* it when "fresh meat" appears on RAS. It's GOOD when "old
hands" get to see "fresh enthusiasms." It's even "gooder" when enthusiasm
isn't "purely raw" but "aviationally informed." Welcome, and thanks for taking
time to raise some genyoowinely-interesting-to-me points involving things that
puzzled me more or less my entire active time as Joe Soaring Pilot...who never
killed a towpilot, or even endangered one. I worked hard not to, and took
quiet pride in flying safely...always wanted to be able to fly the same glider
the next day! And so, on to snipping/cutting/inserting...

Howdy all, new here, only second post, and please forgive my bloviating,
but this has always been a hot button issue for me. My experience is not
as vast as some, but 32 years in aviation, nearly 14,000 hours and 19,000
take offs and landings in everything from Sailplanes, tow planes, single
engine, multi-engine land and sea, turboprops, Helo's, and now "Heavy
Iron".

I haven't flown sailplanes in, effectively, 2 decades. Did my "return"
flight just yesterday. Disclosure, I am a product of UH and Valley Soaring,
with a standard operating procedure of Low Tow.

2 thoughts.

1. My "fear" of High Tow, as both a glider pilot AND as a Tow Pilot, has
been a MAJOR factor in my failure to return to the sport sooner, and
continues to be a significant deterrent of my potential return. (I feel the
same way about Wheel Landings in tail draggers, I know how to high tow and
wheel land, just not a fan.) 2. If we instilled the same safety enhancing
procedures ("One level of safety")in the sport of Soaring as we do in other
aspects of aviation, IE Part 121 or 135, I honestly feel high tow would
have been essentially outlawed long ago. I encountered VERY similar
attitudes in the skydiving industry where I was working as a chief pilot of
a very large jump operation. Outright hostility towards change, even
safety enhancing change, was unfortunately the normal attitude. It took my
preaching to a group of 200+ skydivers over a PA system, to remind them
that continued unsafe behavior would cause them to be nothing more than a
huge 12 step meeting with really expensive jet fueled filled lawn ornaments
sitting on the airport side of the fence. A drop-zone without its pilot is
nothing, same goes for a glider operation without tow pilots.

The whole "high tow thing" has puzzled me ever since learning
(early-on/1970s?) of low-tow. My best guess as to why there's so much
"investment" in high tow in 'Murica has to do with a weird combination of
mental-inertia and the fact that aerotow likely began with high tow - since
the glider almost-always reached flying speed before the tug "back then." I
imagine the thought process as something like the following...
- "Woo hoo" (thinks Joe Glider Pilot), "I'm FLYing!!!"...
- ...and since he was already in high tow, there he stayed for the rest of
that tow and pretty much the rest of eternity!

It took time (dunno how much, but likely more than a week and maybe more than
a few years?), and some actual ACTIVE thought before anyone "began to explore
low tow." As an aside, it's been - for a LONG time - an item of
somewhat-active personal curiosity of mine to understand how the Aussies came
to "go the universal low tow" route. Maybe we 'Muricans might safely benefit
from their experience? Also, what are their tow pilot death rates
therefrom...hmmm? I don't know the answer and would love for informed Aussies
to begin educating we 'Murican RASidents.
- - - - - -

As UH said early in this thread, over 70,000 essentially trouble free low
tows at Valley Soaring over many decades, most with Schweizer tow hooks
must say something. Low tow is the standard down in Oz, and apparently a
few other places in Europe/Scandinavia according to the gentleman I flew
with in the 2-33 yesterday...
Snip...
Low tow costs NOTHING to try. When it is done properly, it is FAR easier
on the glider pilot AND the tow pilot, and has the amazing side effect of
being safer.

Every 'Murican who's aerotowed home for any reason and did so using low tow
has probably had similar "Why do we DO it this way?" sorts of thoughts, "this"
being high-tow-as-the-norm. It's sometimes a bizarro world in which we live!
- - - - - -

We must not allow this discussion to diverge down the wrong
path. Talking about reinventing the wheel and making wholesale, expensive
changes to hardware will not work. When a consistent problem keeps popping
up at the airline level, we institute carefully thought out and implemented
procedural change first. Changing equipment is horrifyingly expensive, and
very time consuming. Procedural changes do not take long. And it usually
produces the anticipated result. In my opinion, for what ever it is worth,
a simple change to how we do things might produce a significantly lower
rate of problems. We did it in the jump flying community. Over the last
20 years ONE MAN, who I am honored to call my friend, created a website,
disseminated accident data and proposed solutions to the skydiving industry
as it pertained to jump flying. It produced a significant 50% REDUCTION in
accidents, and his writings have become policy in over 20 nations around
the world to be permitted to operate as a jump pilot. He did all this just
by suggesting some new, more thorough, training methods and changing the
attitudes of those involved. Even a little.

Boy! Betcha $20 the above paragraph will bring outta the woodwork all manner
of strongly-held opinions!! Some will kneejerk take issue with any idea of
"doing things in sport soaring the airline way." (Those guys are proFESSIONALS
dammit; we're doing this for FUN!!!) Others seem deeply invested in
hardware/software "fixes." As a retired long-time manufacturing engineer from
the so-called high-tech field (tape/disk drives, etc.) I'm reasonably
knollichable with hardware-controlling software-development, widget design,
Murphy, etc. In short - and without intending to express any opinion about ANY
of the previously-proposed hardware/software 'fixes of the
high-tow-killing-towpilots-issue - I'm a big philosophical fan of KISS. But
lest we forget "inertial effects" perhaps that's the biggest roadblock to
"solving the dead towpilot issue" IMHO. "We've always done it this way"
groupthink.

Put me in the "Why NOT procedurally change to low-tow-as-the-U.S.-norm?" club.
Other than inertia, I've yet to encounter a substantive argument against so
doing. And, yes, I know "a fair number of" newbie-XC pilots who've aerotowed
home after A/P landings away from the home base who were
advised/instructed/and IMPLEMENTED their Very First low tows under those
circumstances. None had any issues; some joined me in being - at least for a
time! - puzzled as to who we didn't low-tow all the time. (Me? I only ever did
low tows to keep instructors happy. Weird, huh?)

The ONLY seriously-proposed argument I've encountered AGAINST low tow is the
canard that transitioning to it close to the ground MIGHT be more potentially
dangerous than high tow, because of the need to "endure" the tug's wake as Joe
Glider Pilot allows Mr. Tuggie to climb into position. That's pretty thin, IMO.

An aerospacey/engineering-world axiom is: one good test is worth a thousand
informed opinions.
- - - - - -


Change to low tow, make sure students and visiting pilots understand the
importance of FLY THE PLANE FIRST.

What a concept (that last bit, I mean)! Dirt Simple...but all-too-often
ignored when it matters.
- - - - - -

Keep the existing equipment properly
maintained, maintain effective training methods and attitudes and make sure
they all know open canopies, unlocked spoilers or whatever don't matter
when low to the ground. Fly the damn plane first. Deal with the other
garbage later.

"What HE said!!"
- - - - - -

Snip...

Ask yourself, why do most operations here use high tow? Anyone know why?
Cause I have no idea. Why do we switch to low tow for cross country tows?
I remember hearing people flew high tow because they were afraid if the
rope broke near the tow plane on low tow it would somehow fight a 60 mph
headwind and wrap itself around the control surfaces. Even my 13 year old
mind knew that sounded absolutely absurd. It made no sense as even at 13 I
knew enough physics to know that was impossible. I never heard another
reason for high tow in all my years.

Let the Religious Games begin!!!
- - - - - -


Sorry for the rant. Condolences to everyone involved.

Thanks for an informative, thoughtful post!

Bob W.

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