Hi All,
My own experiences re winch launching and safety be of interest. I learnt to fly using the winch at Warkworth. To the best of my knowledge never an accident using the winch in the years they were using one. Helped establish the Central Coast Gliding Club and was a busy instructor there. They were doing 3,000 winch launches per year. In the 15 years I was there and so far as I know after that no accidents - a time span of nearly 30 years. Moved to LKSC nearly 15 years ago. The club and its precursors have been using a winch, very extensively for mid week training for some time, again no winch launching accidents to my knowledge over 40 years which goes back well before I started gliding so cannot be certain. As against that there have been 4 aerotow accidents involving 5 deaths where I have personally known the people involved. in two cases a midair during the launch, another was a tug wing structural failure and in another the tug pilot dropped the glider just before a fence. a.. Have been dedicated to safety for all my gliding career and carefully studied all aspects.The British, who perform about 300,000 winch launches per year and have accurate records going back 35 years have carefully analysed all accidents and have identified causal factors. We in Australia can learn from their conclusions and reccomendations. As an example in Great Britain, there is an accident involving injury when a glider cartwheels due to wing drop and catching the ground about once every 400,000 launches, Once a cartwheel starts it is unrecoverable and pilot injury almost certrain. The conclusion and advice. Keep a hand on the release during the early part of the launch - no time to grab it if things start to go wrong. If you cannot keep the wings level and a wing is about to touch the ground, release immediately. Might be an inconvenience and a 99% chance you would get the wing up but if all pilots released as advocated then that 1 in 400,000 occurence would not occur. The same applies to all other possible reasons for an accident. At Lake Keepit using Dyneema rope and a world class winch the chance of a rope break/ power failure is remote but can still happen. Adequate training is essential. Maintaining LKSCs perfect winch safety record is my priority.. The undisputed fact is that a winch pilot can either avoid or safely handle every conceivable situation which might occur on a winch launch. Even if a winch driver deliberately tried to cause an accident, the pilot can control the situation. Believe that if something goes wrong it is an instruction failure rather than pilot error. Safe flying, Harry Medlicott Harry
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