A few years ago I built a Klingberg wing. Although I intended it for slope soaring, I chose to use my trusty upstart for the initial test flights. After a few hand tosses seemed to show that the CG and elevons were set up right I hooked the tow hook to the chute of the upstart and stretched it out. I guess I didn't quite have the tow hook in the right place because when I released the model it went up about fifteen feet then started a high speed and very tight flat spin still hooked onto the line. It went around about four rotations then released from the line shooting out in a 90 degree bank at surprisingly high speed flying parallel to the ground to the right. This did a real good simulation of a pucker-factor 9 situation for me and I was fortunate enough to make the right control inputs to save the model. When I landed, my son, who was the only one watching was in complete shock but soon broke into peels of laughter followed by the inevitible, "Do that again!" I adjusted the tow hook as far forward as the setup would allow, but this only delayed the onset of the condition to higher altitudes. The model would still spin then randomly squirt off the upstart in whatever direction would cause the most confusion and test my ability to recover. I took the thing home and created a more forward tow hook location, but didn't use it right away. The next day's flying session offered me a chance to show off my new trick to my friends who all immediately lined up to try it themselves. That model and the upstart gave us some real laughs and excitement. And amazingly enough, we never crashed it.
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