Auto-Towing - why is this not more popular?

From 1995 - 2000 we had a little club that operated mostly with autotow. The biggest expense was, eventually, overhauling the CV joints of the Dodge Ram, eaten by the owner.
I wrote a little instruction manual one weekend in 2000. Behind every recommendation in this is an un-told story.
http://www.danlj.org/~danlj/Soaring/...nch/index.html

http://www.ssa.org/Archive/ViewIssue...onth=10&page=1

This is a article in soaring by Tom Hardy. it describes his experience gathering a group of students and doing low level auto tows runs up and down the runway at a low flight level. I remember reading this when it first came out and was impressed at how much fun it seemed and and quick way to get alot of budding pilots stick time. I met and flew with Mr Hardy in Marfa back in the late 90's. He was quite elderly at the time yet drove there alone, rigged and flew, I was impressed.
T

Start your training in winch land and you get hundreds of low altitude releases. You get quite good at climbing out and recognizing the need to give up and enter the pattern. Even better, do winch training when you're a kid and your brain is a sponge.

Train with aerotow, and you take a relatively small number of 3000 foot tows and just enough pattern tows to achieve PTS landing standards. Climb outs from pattern tows are rare. If you have a CFI-G on board, and you might climb out if the lift is solid and easy when you release.

Move on to XC, fly less frequently, land once a day, and see a regression in landing proficiency. Make an effort to maintain landing proficiency.

Having trained with aerotow exclusively, I'll release at 1300 in reliable lift, but if I don't immediately climb, I head for the pattern. I've never practiced the more subtle decision making that one needs for relatively safe 'low saves'. I avoid struggling for lift below 1300.

If I changed my home airport to a place with a nice winch, a big flat field, and smooth low altitude lift (and not much sink, gusts and wind shear), I'd roll back my training, take a few hundred winch tows over a summer, and fill the low altitude flying gaps in my training. Maybe some place in Germany... The only thing that I've ever practiced below 1300 is circling in smooth easy lift and landing.

I'm an adequate and well-trained pilot for how I fly. If I were a 'natural pilot', I might feel differently. Going to a one-off, auto/winch towing camp would be a good experience, but I'd not have too much confidence in my fresh ground launch endorsement until I did a few hundred launches. People who did their initial training with ground launch have deeply rooted skills that I don't have. I could probably get a ground launch endorsement with a brief effort, but my skills would be thin.

I get stuck on the attitude of "giving up and heading for the pattern".
What works for me is to keep trying until I must lower the gear, turn
base, and land. There's no pattern (for me, at least) when flying that
low. Pick a a touchdown spot early, on airport or off, and work the
lift until you feel that your touchdown spot will soon become out of
reach. Maybe you'll drift to a location where there's another safe
landing spot, maybe not. The comfort comes from developing that feeling
for the glider and its response to your input.

On 10/11/2015 8:34 AM, son_of_flubber wrote:
Start your training in winch land and you get hundreds of low altitude releases. You get quite good at climbing out and recognizing the need to give up and enter the pattern. Even better, do winch training when you're a kid and your brain is a sponge.

Train with aerotow, and you take a relatively small number of 3000 foot tows and just enough pattern tows to achieve PTS landing standards. Climb outs from pattern tows are rare. If you have a CFI-G on board, and you might climb out if the lift is solid and easy when you release.

Move on to XC, fly less frequently, land once a day, and see a regression in landing proficiency. Make an effort to maintain landing proficiency.

Having trained with aerotow exclusively, I'll release at 1300 in reliable lift, but if I don't immediately climb, I head for the pattern. I've never practiced the more subtle decision making that one needs for relatively safe 'low saves'. I avoid struggling for lift below 1300.

If I changed my home airport to a place with a nice winch, a big flat field, and smooth low altitude lift (and not much sink, gusts and wind shear), I'd roll back my training, take a few hundred winch tows over a summer, and fill the low altitude flying gaps in my training. Maybe some place in Germany... The only thing that I've ever practiced below 1300 is circling in smooth easy lift and landing.

I'm an adequate and well-trained pilot for how I fly. If I were a 'natural pilot', I might feel differently. Going to a one-off, auto/winch towing camp would be a good experience, but I'd not have too much confidence in my fresh ground launch endorsement until I did a few hundred launches. People who did their initial training with ground launch have deeply rooted skills that I don't have. I could probably get a ground launch endorsement with a brief effort, but my skills would be thin.



--
Dan, 5J

Hi Sean another small video of a car Launch from this years Safari to the Kerry Beaches. Typical Irish Gliding weather - low cloudbase, weak ridge lift and rain, a lot worse than what you had in Chilhowee!

Regards
Bruno

Sorry here is the link
https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=...&v=NnhoE7G68YM

On Sunday, October 11, 2015 at 10:16:34 AM UTC-5, Muttley wrote:
Sorry here is the link
https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=...&v=NnhoE7G68YM

Wonderful! Is this the beach at Inch?

Years and Years ago, when a mere student pilot on vacation, we stumbled on a similar operation there. Similar weather - the wind was really howling - similar K13 - but I just watched for a while.

On 10/11/2015 9:16 AM, Muttley wrote:
Sorry here is the link
https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=...&v=NnhoE7G68YM

So cool! Except for the water (on the ground, I mean, ha ha) that took me back
to my early training days in Cumberland, MD when - for lack of a better idea -
I'd go to the field on similar days, often there to find my instructor (who
lived 3 hours away), insisting I take a tow in similar low-cloudbase,
drizzling, superficially gloomy conditions. Many times we'd find
intermittently usable convective lift, and it wasn't long after I got my
license I figured out I'd been also learning a whole heckuva lot more about
the atmosphere and in-flight judgment, too. (Thanks, Tom!)

Man, it is FUN to soar on "unsoarable" days. It's even more fun to be having &
able to do so when XC!

Bob W.

On 10/11/2015 9:09 AM, Dan Marotta wrote:
I get stuck on the attitude of "giving up and heading for the pattern".
What works for me is to keep trying until I must lower the gear, turn base,
and land. There's no pattern (for me, at least) when flying that low.
Pick a a touchdown spot early, on airport or off, and work the lift until
you feel that your touchdown spot will soon become out of reach. Maybe
you'll drift to a location where there's another safe landing spot, maybe
not. The comfort comes from developing that feeling for the glider and its
response to your input.

Pretty much, "What Dan said." Where-n-when I obtained my license was a shared
field (Cumberland, MD) and I had it beat into my skull to "NEVER be trying to
soar below pattern altitude (or you'll screw it up for gliding here, and quite
possibly also do somethings else stupid)!!!" So the first question the Chief
Instructor (not mine, but one from whom I'd heard the above message) asked me
after I'd abandoned a 5-hour attempt after approximately 4 hours and 55
minutes late on an overcast afternoon during which there'd been essentially
zero other traffic of any kind was, "What'd you quit circling for? There was
nobody around!" I'd known that, but...and the question didn't diminish the
bloom on my rose one iota.

Fast forward a few years and maybe a couple hundred total soaring hours to
Boulder, CO, another (almost guaranteed-to-be-busy) shared airport. There,
simple self-preservation is usually sufficient for Joe Average Glider Pilot to
realize on his own that circling down/below pattern altitude as if the sky
isn't a shared resource, is dangerously foolish, with or without instructor or
peer input. That said, the relatively busy pattern entry sky is simultaneously
a superb training location for improving one's situational awareness when
simultaneously trying to avoid having to land. Over the years there've been
times I pulled the plug as high as (say) 1300' agl, and other times I've hung
on to below 1000' agl delaying my pattern waiting for less congested
pattern-or-field conditions, and (rarely) some times landing farther down the
field was the safest and sanest choice, ground-convenience be damned. I can
recall only twice when my "Shoot - landing required!" planning didn't result
in my desired outcome, once due to a grossly situationally-unaware, visiting,
bozo glider pilot who barged into the pattern from an unapproved/"wind-wrong"
direction at about 500' agl, and once from a local pilot burning off several
thousand feet of altitude in an almighty rush to get on the ground "just
because." In both cases, I simply landed well down the runway to avoid 'em.
Point being, there's "no guaranteed magic" about a height-agl number when it
comes to pattern planning, and if Joe Pilot insists on thinking there is, he's
setting himself up for (at the very least) some future disappointments.

That was all in my mid-twenties, ~40 years ago.

Bob - head on a swivel is good! - W.

On Sun, 11 Oct 2015 09:09:00 -0600, Dan Marotta wrote:

I get stuck on the attitude of "giving up and heading for the pattern".
What works for me is to keep trying until I must lower the gear, turn
base, and land. There's no pattern (for me, at least) when flying that
low. Pick a a touchdown spot early, on airport or off, and work the
lift until you feel that your touchdown spot will soon become out of
reach. Maybe you'll drift to a location where there's another safe
landing spot, maybe not. The comfort comes from developing that feeling
for the glider and its response to your input.

Well said.

In addition, the 'several hundred' winch launches shouldn't be needed: a
good summer's local soaring should do the job for a signed-off solo
pilot. Realistically thats no more than 100 launches at the outside.

Don't forget that all the critical stuff, such as being able to fly
approaches from any point round the field onto any sensible run on the
field and getting rid of any fixation on using local landmarks when
judging circuits and landings, should have been covered pre-solo.
Similarly, dealing with cable breaks and winch failures at various
heights and stages in the launch should have been adequately covered
before getting the winch sign-off.

I did essentially all my training on the winch, soloing on my 80th flight
and being sent off in a Junior to complete Silver C with the distance
flight (off the winch) as my 207th launch as soon as I've been signed off
for the Bronze XC endorsement. A quick logbook scan says that, of those
207 flights, 11 were aero tows [1] and 4 were in an SF-25 TMG[2].

[1] That was for a spin demo in our Puchacz. Our summer instructor that
year knew how to spin an ASK-21 without any tail weights, etc. and so I
got my spin sign-offs in the ASK-21 with him off winch launches on good,
thermally days

[2] three of these SF-25 flights were normal take-offs. The remaining one
was a winch launch - I was visiting Nympsfield and got offered a ride
over to Aston Down (my first on type) in an SF-25, which was fitted with
a winch hook on its u/c strut. Its owner had it winched for the return
flight to show me what it could do. It felt very odd to be going up the
wire with the prop brake set to keep the prop clear of the cable and one
blade stationary in front of us (a 3-blader before you ask). Once
released at 1300, we glided around a bit before making an air start at
900 ft and flying back to NYM to soar the ridge a bit before landing.


--
martin@ | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
org |