Oppinions on Towing a HG off Water

Dear experienced HG pilots

As a HG student (Slope gliding level), i and some fiends, have been discussing the concept of learning to glide from altitude by towing HG off the ground. We are fully aware of the dangers involved, when an inexperienced student is towed aloft over solid ground. The question is, can it be done more safely over water? and how? The idea is, that water is less dangerous to hit, if all goes wrong.

In hope of a serious answer, even if the question turns out to be stupid.

Best regards

Hi Henry,

Hit at speed or from altitude, water surface can break as many bones as land can.

Boat towing can be a lot of fun and certainly a good method of training... IF an experienced group is doing the teaching. Certainly floatation must be used: after many experiements, our group used halfway-split cylinders of foam on each of the flying wires, tied to the basetube corners, plus one more on the keel. I actually believe boat towing to be a bit more dangerous than towing over land because of the danger of drowning and panic. I took my very first high flights from a boat tow and it was great... but I was flying with people who had been boat towing for a few years, and I luckily already knew how to land the glider.

Our club used to tow quite extensively on the water using a Ski Nautique as platform launch vehicle. We did have some gliders flip over on bad landings, which panicked the learning student pilot. They were still above water and in my opinion weren't in any real danger of drowning, but it was a scary thing to watch their terror, and that's NEVER a good thing. To feel like you're attached to a sinking glider has got to be scary. Over the ground (assuming a proper training site) and using big wheels, this same training landing would have been rolled in and been a nice learning experience - 'now, did you feel the glider settle and begin to mush? You need to flare just before that!' But in our case, we pulled the terrified student back into the boat, spent about an hour retrieving 190 sq ft of sail from the bottom of 4 feet of water (while the floats nicely held the basetube out of the water!), and she wasn't really interested in flying ever again. Some lessons were learned the hard way... but at least we learned chute repacking quite well!

Just my comments; if you know of a group who has a good safety record with boat towing for a few years, I'd say go for it. If you want to pick it up yourself or on your own, I'd be a lot more cautious.

Henrik & Gitte, I recommend that you first get tandem towing instructions from certified tandem tow pilots. Even if you need plane tickets to get to the instructors, I still recommend you do that. It may be expensive, but trying to figure out how to do this can cost a lot more. There is some specialized gear needed for towing, and it must be set up correctly. You should not hope to get this from a newsgroup. Even if somebody told you 'everything' (that's a thin book worth), this would not be practical or safe. I agree with Brent, water towing can be more dangerous than over land. There are several methods of land towing available now. One is to launch from a dolly that holds the pilot and glider, but stays on the ground as the pilot goes airborne. Almost any pickup truck with an automatic transmission would work, once it was fitted out with the reel mechanism, but an ultralight towplane is a great alternative. Watch the guys who do it a lot, and get them to check out everything that you will use. It will be worth it.

(I DO understand - some of the people I fly with can be best described as fiends!)

- Rod Buck

Hi all,

Thanks' for your advice !

best regards Henrik Larsen

'Brent Harsh' < This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it > skrev i en meddelelse