Minimum number of flights for winch sign off?

On Wednesday, February 14, 2018 at 12:03:54 AM UTC-7, Frank Whiteley wrote:
On Tuesday, February 13, 2018 at 10:45:18 PM UTC-7, Frank Whiteley wrote:
On Tuesday, February 13, 2018 at 8:42:33 PM UTC-7, b4soaring wrote:
On Tuesday, 13 February 2018 14:53:27 UTC, Waveguru wrote:
What would be the consensus for the minimum number of flights to get a ground launch sign off for an experienced glider pilot? How many cable breaks and at what altitude? Of course it would take more for some and less for others, but I would think at least 15 launches with 5 cable breaks at various heights?

Boggs

Basic principles of instruction:
-- ground briefing
-- instructor demonstration
-- student attempt

Winch launch failure instruction:
-- full climb, low level, land ahead
-- full climb, higher up, can't land ahead
-- full climb, random height, gradual power failure

That's a minimum of 6 launch failures. Where I'm from we also do an initial climb launch failure (pre full climb), instructor demo only (more training accidents than real accidents.) So that's an absolute minimum of 7 instructional launch failures.

The good news is that winch launching is really easy, easier than aerotowing. A competent pilot will learn to winch launch in 4 or 5 flights, so your 15 launch suggestion is do-able, but I would include more launch failures. For ab initio training we do a lot more launch failures before and after solo, just to reinforce the "expect a launch failure every launch" mindset.

Currency is very important. The shape of the airfield will also affect safety, a nice big round grass airfield will be very different to a commercial airfield.

I PM'D Gary at first. I agree with the above, though I would suggest that about 20 is the right number. Before emergencies, 5-6 'normal' launches so that the pilot understands what they are trying to achieve consistently. Then work on the 'breaks' and post break options and gotchas. Then a few more consistency checks and speed up, slow down signalling. Wing rock is deprecated. These exercises also keep winch drivers on their toes. I can often tell from the winch who is flying the two-seaters by the way they rotate and their climb attitude to 400-500 feet.

Frank Whiteley

Club syllabus. Needs some minor revision. We used flags but now use airband radios on our licensed frequency.

http://www.soarcsa.org/index.php?page=training Documents.

http://www.soarcsa.org/uploads/file/...ngSyllabus.pdf

http://www.soarcsa.org/index.php?page=winch-operations

You are welcome to borrow, adapt, or critique any of the above.

Frank Whiteley


Winch procedures manual referred to above.

http://www.soarcsa.org/uploads/file/...inchManual.pdf