JD,
Although my first reaction to Jim's post was the usual "What new lunacy is this?" I paused long enough to consider the possibility that amongst his preponderance of misrepresentations and distortions every once in a great while he might say something with some fragment of accuracy about it.
I was then able to dredge up some faint memory of being shown a rivet fix by someone so I'll credit that part of the statement. In order for him to declare with total confidence that I plagiarized someone else's "brilliant" modification however, he would have to be clairvoyant and it should be painfully obvious to anyone with a third grade or better reading level that he is, in fact, anything but.
But anyway, I then wondered why I hadn't remembered the modification. So I took a look at the actions I had just taken and thought processes I followed in the wake of the incident report you provided.
I killed two seconds coming up with the needle and thread fix, a few minutes to model it, an hour of idle toying with it in front of the television, and a day to set up, shoot, edit, and post the photos.
I wrote an advisory I intended to post to this forum, under a separate heading, and to skysailingtowing then started thinking about a subject line.
curved pin barrel release advisory
?
Nah. How 'bout:
AEROTOW RELEASE HAZREP: DO NOT FORCE SQUARE PEG IN ROUND HOLE
At that point I was realizing what a sickening waste of time this had all been and the primary reason I would have erased to the greatest extent possible all traces a pointless rivet "fix". (If it was indeed Jim who had relayed that information that would have been another.)
And, yeah, I did all this work 'cause I thought I could get away with stealing someone else's scintillating concept of making dog shit smell better.
Until I read your report I would never have believed it possible for somebody with enough mental processing power to sit and chew gum to have made a modification necessary. And I've got no interest in saving such an individual from himself.
Publicizing a fix to prevent someone from rotating the pin backwards would be like giving Dick Cheney a hunter safety course. What's the goal? To DECREASE the probability of him shooting himself, one of his friends, or anybody associated with or in shotgun range of the middle of a cage bird slaughtering operation? And to INCREASE the danger to which the quail is exposed? (That's quail with an "i", by the way.) I'd much rather put my energies into developing technologies to equip the bird to launch a counterattack or - what the hell - a preemptive strike (what goes around...).
Nah. Sometimes you just have to examine your objectives and think of the gene pool.
Let's take a look at your situation.
I don't recall the details of this either but, apparently, by your account, on many occasions you were bound, gagged, and forced to look at my system but, instead of making the best of the situation and considering that you might not already know everything worth knowing about release systems, you pissed all over it. (Yes, do keep chewing the crow a bit longer.)
My system is, in fact, 100% effective. If you care to say that otherwise you need to back that assertion up with field or experimental data or at least devise a plausible scenario. So please give me something other than vague speculation or withdraw the statement. If you really care about such matters take a look at the spinnaker shackle engineering abomination with which you are so enamored with respect to its reliability and number of people it's killed.
(If you want to see a cable actuated release assembly that DOESN'T look like it was put together by a committee composed of meth recovery center clients - get in touch with Tim Hinkel.)
At any time you have ever seen my system it would have included at least one barrel release in which the lock you induced was simply not possible. But apparently that had no impression.
In my previous post I indicated that a look at my photos would be a good Plan B to understand why all of my designs are immune to your capacity for sabotage. I'm guessing you still haven't taken the trouble? Here, I'll make it real easy for you - Secondary Components set: Barrel Release - Brake - Fore - Port.
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A "PROPERLY CONSTRUCTED BAILEY". It's an oxymoron - like a really great intelligent design textbook or an excellent three point tow bridle.
The error you committed - correct me if I'm wrong - was not an accident or an oversight. It took deliberate effort. It is the single most counterintuitive action I can recall anyone ever taken in connecting a release (and, yeah, that includes hooking the harness suspension carabiner into the spinnaker shackle) and, to my knowledge, you're the only person ever to have pulled it off.
Had I committed an error of that magnitude I might feel a little less qualified to comment on release system technology than you do. Likewise if, after nearly four years I of aerotowing, I didn't understand the sequencing of the half dozen or so basic elements of a two point release system I'd think real seriously about switching medications. I tend to grasp that sort of thing in as many seconds - but the weed wasn't very good back in my college days.
But, yeah, you should have publicized it when it happened. And you should have then and should now tell us what possessed you to rotate that pin backwards.
Something else I'm wondering - If you thought that you were going to reap some advantage through this variation of procedure, what stopped you from attempting to double your blessings by likewise disabling the port release? Note that that action would very likely left you glued about as solidly to the tow line as was Robin on his final flight.
Note also that in two of the three release incidents you experienced and reported you modified a critical flight system and didn't bother preflighting it.
After the latter and more serious incident you determined that the only way you could disable the release was to - again - take deliberate action. But instead of just resolving never to do something that stupid again you developed a workaround solution that made your system more dangerous by eliminating some of the redundancy you claim to value so much, redundancy which was - in the shoddy system you're using - mandatory. You left yourself with no certainty of weak link protection on your end of the string - as required for all tow flights.
READ PARAGRAPH 6 OF YOUR 2008/01/27 21:16:54 POST TO ME.
(By the way - Your weak link system sucks too compared to the one Sunny and I and a few others are using. The latter would increase the diameter of material engaged by the pins of both barrel releases thus mitigating one of your (unfounded) fears.)
A bit more with respect to the plagiarism accusation...
Don't you find it a bit odd that, while I responded to your post as quickly - two days - as I could complete the background work, Jim took six to tell you about the rivet?
Also, I don't know when this genius stroke modification was first manifested but isn't it also a bit odd that...
At the time of the incident neither you, Lisa, nor, apparently anyone in that Quest circle smack dab in the heart of the AT power center of the world was aware of it.
Highland has been punching out zillions of junk barrel releases lately but none of the thirty or so other regular followers of this thread mentioned knowing of it in that six day span.
I can't really prove that I'm not the ethically challenged parasite that Jim says I am but if you really want some circumstantial evidence upon which to base an opinion...
You can go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/skysailingtowing/
You'll have to register but I've got a file there - mousetraps - with extensive AT release system documentation. In it I rip apart all of the deficiencies of existing stupid mechanisms. The current edition is dated 2008/01/12 and there's no mention of the reversed pin phenomenon. (There will be in the next.)
Nah, JD, I'm not the least bit surprised that it bothers you when people try to "improve" upon some design you have pronounced the pinnacle of perfection. Probably goes back to the influence of one of your instructors who has no clue what he's looking at either. Good thing that that attitude hasn't completely infiltrated the sport or we'd all be bragging about our five to one glides.
I crossed paths only once with Bobby Bailey - Dragonfly promo tour - 1991/08. I was quite impressed, liked him personally, and am very much in his debt for the technology he developed. But nobody walks on water.
When Wills Wing started putting out AT series gliders there was an issue in which you could put one together to the point at which it appeared ready to go, take off, fly indefinitely, maybe land OK, maybe have a wing come off with no warning whatsoever. Pilot error, failure to follow setup procedure, failure to preflight. Pete Lehman was nearly killed. I was stupid and negligent but smart enough to only insert the plug halfway into the basetube before failing to complete the setup and skipping the preflight. So my control frame fell apart while I was maneuvering to the Woodstock launch ramp.
Nothing wrong with the planes, not Wills Wings fault. But they worked through a few revisions to better protect us from ourselves without penalizing the integrity of their gliders and this failure is no longer a possibility.
The Dragonfly is a great plane - nuthin' much wrong with it. But it's got an issue in which you can put it together to the point at which it appears ready to go, take off, fly indefinitely, maybe land OK, maybe have a wing come off with no warning whatsoever. If its design had been amended with as much as something like four orange decals featuring some alignment marks we'd very likely still be seeing Chad around on the weekends.
2003/09/15 - five months after Chad was killed - another Dragonfly ended up on the ground in a significantly less crumpled heap. Fortunately the parachute worked that time so the supply of tug pilots was not further depleted. A component of the aileron control linkage had failed. Although there was some degree of operator error involved it was not an isolated incident. Sunny referred to that aspect of the design as "crap" or something along that line.
So if you've got no interest in and/or aptitude for making things better and safer I sure do wish you'd spend more of your spare time flying and stay the hell out of this and similar discussions.
I don't know or care much whose idea the goddam rivet was or when it appeared on the scene or what a "Genuine Bailey Release" is. My feeling is that only a total idiot would give much of a rat's ass about having that modification as a component of his personal equipment. (By the way - Do you have the fore ends of all of your cambered battens labeled "THIS END FIRST"?)
And regardless of whether Bobby or - as I suspect - some unknown party developed this fix for a nonexistent problem or I stole the idea or developed it independently - it wasn't "brilliant". Any ten year old whose brain hadn't been ravaged by too much fetal alcohol syndrome, Sunday school, mercury laden tuna sandwiches, and pilot training could also have come up with the idea in a matter of seconds.
Also regardless of the origin(s) of this flavor of idiot proofing - it's quite certain that it wasn't an idea of Jim's or yours.
I find it incredibly disappointing and depressing that your initial reaction to the description of my stitching fix was "brilliant". I was hoping for and expecting something along the lines of "HOW COULD I HAVE BEEN SO STUPID! If I had just thought for two seconds about a fix instead of a workaround..."
Of course, had you done so, you would no doubt have had a USHGA Instructor telling you "Dude, you're modifying a tried and true design and that makes you the test pilot. You just can't tell what's going to happen in the air - I recommend against it."
The secondary weak link that you referenced in your observation of Jim's teaching at Quest also wasn't an innovation of Jim's, yours, or Bobby Bailey's. I started incorporating one in 1993 and, when I proposed that everyone should be using them, was greeted with the sounds of crickets chirping and cud being chewed. So yeah, JD, there's lotsa people who never see any reason to question or improve things. Try reading Towing Aloft (1998) sometime and see how much unbelievable stupidity is archived in that text.
When you pronounce the Bailey release to be at the maximum of efficiency and safety, have you actually done any comparative testing to justify that statement? (Yeah, that's a rhetorical question.) Try subjecting it to the USHGA Tow Committee Release Test Procedures (Towing Aloft - Appendix III) and see how it fares. (Caution: Don't use a copy to which you attach much sentimental value.)
You say the best solution for you is simple. So which pin is simpler: straight or curved? What advantages do you reap from your current pin of choice.
Tell ya what - you come up with one and I'll campaign for you to get a Nobel prize in physics.
Here's another little discrepancy I find puzzling...
When you were on the ground with no pressure, time limitation, or excuse of any kind you made an obvious, critical, and potentially lethal mistake performing an extremely simple procedure with respect to your release system. You have so little confidence in your competence to avoid a repetition that you feel the need to modify your equipment.
Yet you are so supremely confident in your ability to separate from tow in any conceivable rapidly progressing life threatening situation that might present itself that you feel comfortable pronouncing the major efforts of those of us who have developed systems to make tow termination more reliable, faster, easier, and LESS complicated "JUST A WASTE OF TIME"?
I think you'll find a lot of disagreement amongst pilots who have their shit together a lot better than you do. Even Jim 'love(s) the idea of the "dead man" release'.
Let's play the time machine game and ask Holly if she'd like to put a four-string in her pocket and set the dial for the morning of 2005/05/29.
Tell me, please, what's the downside to having a little more edge, another couple of safety arrows in your quiver? And while you're fruitlessly struggling for an answer you should consider that a lockout ain't the only flavor of shit that can smack you in the face on tow. Ask Ollie Gregory for an example.
As a matter of fact - now that I think of it (thank you)... A lockout should NEVER be the dung that puts demands on pilot, glider, and release system.
As you state, when you're locked out, you - by definition - have no control, so it doesn't matter where your hands are. But exactly what relevance does that have to any issue concerning primary, secondary, or emergency releases (or weak links)?
You're not supposed to be using any of those items when you're locked out. You're supposed to use them - at least up to at an altitude at which it doesn't much matter - whenever you yaw or roll twenty degrees or more from straight and level while you're still IN CONTROL. Even in Holly's aforementioned nightmare scenario the glider was responding to (too much) control input until well into the third oscillation.
So, without being able to cite any negative consequences or tradeoffs to having finger on the trigger capability for two and one point towing, you're telling me that at the most critical period of any tow flight you're ever gonna experience, your preference is to take a hand off the the basetube and thereby surrender all control for however long it takes to hit your mark and get back. And if you've got a one point slack line emergency you're happy reassigning both hands?
Ever notice the shit that happens during a critical phase of free flight - landing - when people are compelled to take hands off the basetube? Are you really sure you want to maintain that platform?
Oh well, even I get winded out eventually.
Anytime - barring light wind and strong thermal conditions - you'd like to actually understand this stuff I'd be happy to help you. But you need to forget what you "know" and boot up with fifth grade science - just like I did.
I am impressed that at least you have demonstrated the capacity to concede a little when you've been wrong about something. That seems to be a rare quality on this forum and is an important start.
