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Blue Ridge Crash
A long time ago I visited a soaring site in Israel. The signal the glider pilots used to signal readiness to the tow pilot was not waving the rudder like in the USA, but opening and closing the spoilers/breaks twice. I was told one of the reasons for this was to make sure they were closed on TO. -- Roberto Waltman This above post by Mr Waltman makes alot of sense to me and I would like to see this procedure looked at closely. I am also a big fan of launching with the spoilers open and have been doing it now for several years with good results. Another thing I have trained myself to do is; When the towplane / glider unit gets airborne and is in a steady state of climb, I glance out to the left wing and look at the spoilers. It is easy to do and your focus distance does not change much. Another big issue for me is what really caused this accident, it sounds like the rope or weak link broke. I don't think the rope should come apart on a guy just because he has his spoilers out and the tow is slowly progressing. I've taken off in Parowan in my ASW-20 full of water with the spoilers unlocked. I didn't think much of it untill the tow pilot called and remarked about all the sink we were flying through! We all make mistakes. If the tug cannot climb and has to turn the glider loose, so be it. if the tow starts going squirrily and the tow pilot is getting scared, turn the glider loose. But it should be a decision made by the pilots, not a P.O.S. rope break. Further more I think we need to all be using High Quality ropes and weak links, and give up on that polypro. The poly pro comes unthreaded,untied, it is EASILY damaged, it looks like hell after only a few tows. Look on the Wings and Wheels web page and look at the rope TOST puts out and the Dacron Rope. Here in Telluride we ONLY use Dacron ropes because they are reliable. If you have a rope break here, early on the tow, it is really bad news. Heck it's bad news anywhere to have a rope break low. It can be FATAL . lets get rid of those poly ropes. And in the long run the Hi Quality ropes ARE cheaper, and when they are used up, you can use them for other things, not just throw them away. How green is that? Nick Kennedy Grob Twin Astir TF LS-6 XS |
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