HSS Auto Tow Training

[Music] this is a training video for performing Auto toes in at the Hobs industrial air park with hob saring Society all right so I want to go over I want to go over the process of the toe and some emphasis items we have an operations manual you need to read it if you haven't read it read that first uh this is to emphasize certain items from that and just elaborate some sometimes an explanation is better uh in person as it were than uh than on on paper but read the operations manual that's a requirement and then uh and then use this video to help maybe fill in the gaps or um just for elaboration all right so we're going to go over the whole process of of the toe and this this video is primarily directed to um getting new people driving the toe okay and and doing it the same way uh consistently by the book so that everybody's doing it the same way less confusion or no confusion and that way we have smoother and safer operations okay first of all when we're on a day we're going to tow doesn't matter if it's one glider U if you're towing your buddy up or we're a whole club is meeting to tow a whole gaggle of gliders call the tower that's the Hobs uh the other the the class Delta the Lee County Regional Hobs Airport report we call the tower a couple things you want to tell them who you are where you're from so um so they they answer the phone Hobbs Tower this is Gabe and you say my name is this is Step Leighton from Hobs industrial Lair Park so you're telling them who you are where you're coming from doesn't matter where you live you're telling them I'm at the airport next door I'm at Hobs industrial Air Park we are going to be flying gliders today and you're going to tell them when you're flying you can do this three hours in advance you tell them when you're going to start and when you're going to end and a lot of times we don't know when we're going to end we just know when we're going to start so tell them this is so and so at Hobs industrial air Park we're flying three gliders today up to because they're going to know want to know how high cuz they're talking about they're looking at protecting that airspace for you or at least keeping their air planes that they have some control over out of your area so we don't know where all we're going to be but we know for sure we're going to be above the airport right at least there so uh this is Steven Leighton from Hobs industrial we expect to have three gliders today uh at a maximum altitude of 15,000 ft okay if Cloud base is 15,000 that day or if it's 8,000 then you tell them whatever Cloud base is expected to be and and that's just because they're going to whatever traffic they have they have Direction directional control over they can kind of steer them around our area uh just to try to keep separation it's not a requirement uh and you don't have to tell them all the details of everything but tell them when what and where okay so with that done stage The Wire now the wire is stored right over here this is a overview of the runway this is basically magnetic north facing up um so Runway one two and 3 0 so between this is the ramp and this is the club hangers so the wire is staged not staged but it's stored right here next to the runway partially on the runway okay so to Stage the wire you just drive the pickup over here let's just say here's the wind today we got a wind blowing from the south so we're going to have a little bit of a right cross wind taking off of of one two so you you hook the toe tow vehicle up tow truck up to uh to the wire and you want to pull it out here out to the middle of the runway so you just drive out to the middle of the runway with it connected and you drive this way now you know that wire kind of pulls and it doesn't exactly follow the path that you drove but it basically does so before you drive when you're parked here you hook up that wire when it was pulled out is when it was pulled off the Reel was used used an odometer and the odometer read 0.4 miles 0.4 miles that's about 2400 ft but the odometer will read 0.4 miles so go to the trip odometer and reset it to zero and then drive to the middle of the runway and pull it when you get to 0.4 miles you know that now this end of the of the wire is where you started and then you can drive a little bit further you know use your judgment but drive a little bit further to make sure it's not over here still trying to get to the middle now it's ought to be in the middle okay get out unhook turn the truck around reset your odometer again and drive 0 four miles and by the time you hit 04 you should be seeing the end the chain on the other end coming right up okay now this drive back this is the first toe of the day you've pulled it out of storage who knows if it got damaged during in storage some somebody we might have had vandals come out here and do something to it don't know so so when you turn around reset your odometer and start driving back drive slow drive next to the wire roll your window down and drive next to the wire slowly looking trying to look at you know the best you can from the pickup look for anything funny look for anything messed up any any sharp Kinks now it's always going to have this you know it's always going to have a a waviness to it an uneven Wess even but if it has a that or a or a sharp kink in it that needs to be looked at and if it's as sharp as I'm drawing it probably needs to be spliced because real sharp bends in that are going to be a brittle fracture and it's going to pull apart so uh you're mainly looking at stuff like that so look at the ends where it attaches to the chain uh maybe take a close look at any splices that may already exist and uh basically just slowly Drive take your time and check the condition of the wire and then when you get down to the other end hook up to it and pull it over here to Stage it so pull it this way and now it's staged at the other end of the runway ready for a glider and by that time you may have a glider out there waiting on you okay so you have staged it you've inspected it now well sure enough we do have a glider we had a glider and an anxious glider pilot waiting to go fly all right so now you got a glider at the the other end you have a conversation with the glider pilot the Mr tow driver um you're going to decide what the maximum speed is that's the maximum speed if you have lost comms if you lose communication so radio malfunction people do funny things frequencies get set on the wrong wrong one sometimes it it happens so so if it happens you want the toad to continue to be safe and not just safe but effective we'd like the toe to continue all the way to to get the the glider in the air no problem even though we lost communication that would be nice all this can happen and so this is an important step so it's the Judgment of the pilot that you can look at the wind sock from here you sure can you can look at the wind sock you can put your hands out you can feel the wind in your hair or lack thereof and and decide you know I think this is about a 10 mph wind or a 15 or a this is just five or something you make a judgment the pilot makes a judgment on how strong that wind is in this case 10 miles hour now if that pilot is in a 126 the 126 has a max toe speed of 60 miles per hour 60 miles per hour now the 233 the trainer has a max toe speed of 69 now these are ground launch speeds they're placarded as winch launch I think or maybe it says winch or Auto toe but anyway if it's ground launch if it's connected to the ground they're telling you what the max toe speed is because of the angle not because anyway if it's if it's pulled and because you're tied to some something else so um aot toe is fast it's 98 milph for both of them but so I'm going to use the 126 just because the math is simple so pilot says I know the placard at toe speed for my 126 is 60 and I know that I got I have a 10 m per hour headwind now real quickly that means that if they're both going level across the ground if the truck is reading 20 miles per hour the glider is going to be reading 30 miles hour because they're not just seeing the speed of the vehicle they're not just going 20 over the ground they're also seeing the headwind of an extra 10 so that headwind is extra for the glider so so then the the pilot in his in his or her head takes that headwind that they have judged is 10 and they subtract it minus if I can make this thing right minus 10 miles per hour that gives me 50 miles hour so that means if the truck is going 50 miles hour and I have a 10 m per hour headwind in the while I'm flying this glider I'm still going to be seeing 60 miles per hour which is my maximum speed now knowing that the wind that that that headwind is probably higher once you get up because of wind shear I would probably subtract some from that and just say you know what I think I'm going to scrap that and go with 45 miles per hour that is that's sort of the process you go through um so then the pilot tells you as the tow driver maximum speed 45 miles per hour okay and you remember that and if you forget it then ask before we start the toe once you're down there all right so we've set the max speed in case of lost communication now this can be exceeded but not without communication okay so we connect the glider when you connect the glider uh for the for when you connect the wire to the glider first you show them what you're about to connect you show them the condition of the of the rope and the end the ring so this is standard this is not just at Hobs this is standard with all all glider operations you always show the pilot the rope in in our case a lot of times the in this case the 126 it'll be a weak link you're showing them the condition of the Rope so they can go ooh let's replace that I don't want to tow behind that Fray old thing or yep I'm okay and you wait for them they're getting everything prepared they're getting ready to fly you wait for them to be ready before you connect it for a couple of reasons once you're connected the pilot has to be ready to fly now this isn't necessarily true in Hobs because of the way we operate but if you go somewhere else this is the way it needs to be treated if you're if you're connecting to an airplane even in Hobs uh as soon you have a running airplane in front of you as soon as you connect that rope you're tied to the airplane now um so you need to be ready to fly at all times okay so we need to treat it the same way in Hobs whenever you connect it that so you're waiting on the pilot to get ready once they're ready they're all situated then they say okay let's get connected you show them the rope and connect it you go through that process so now we're connected and we've already agreed on the maximum speed if they lose communication and then so tow driver then quickly doesn't have to be a race it's not a drag race you don't need to try to wear the pickup out getting there but you do need to quickly go to the other end don't take your time so do drive fast you just don't have need to drive Crazy Fast Drive quickly to the other end of the line oh how how do you know where it's at well before you left you set your odometer your trip odometer back to zero hopefully so you drive4 miles and when you get there you'll see the end of the line and you get centered hook it up when you hook it up there's going to be slack okay so we're going to take the slack out got to take that slack out very slowly now if you know you have like 10 ft of slack you know because you saw it here and you saw it here whatever you whatever slack you created whenever you hooked it up there there's going to be slack all right we've connected the glider um so you hook you hook up the tow vehicle and hopefully the pilot can see you um this is where vigilance on the Pilot's part needs to happen because it's a long ways away it's almost half a mile away usually they can see they can see at least people moving and doors shutting and stuff like that so now you've connected so now both ends are connected and things are getting more serious so you get back in the truck tow driver gets back in the truck gets on the radio and says ready to take out slack that's the verbiage ready to take out slack or you could identify yourself as Hobs ground ready to take out slack okay not anything else ready to take out slack that's the verbage you use the glider pilot responds with go ahead and take out slack or take out Slack so they are not not uh oh don't take out the slack that would be really bad because that sounds with if your radio is fuzzy or you're cutting out a word that sounds the same like the same thing so if the glider pilot is not ready to take out slack yet then they should say standby standby so under normal conditions tow driver ready to take out slack pilot go ahead and take out slack back to tow driver and you say Slack's coming out or taking out slack better to say something like Slack's coming out it's a little bit different that way everybody knows what's going on they you know that they've heard you they know that you've heard them and then you start taking out slack you you slowly do this so if you know there's 10t of slack you can kind of scoot up a little bit and take out take out what you know is there but when you get when you get close and you're waiting for the pilot to stop you you're waiting for it to all get taut it has to be slow so how slow like if I just real speed walking when I'm getting the slack all the way out it needs to be like this very slow so that when it gets tight the glider is moving at this rate no faster if it's like a if you're taking out what you think is slow but it's really kind of a a brisk walk whenever the the glider pilot then says slack is out and you hit the brakes now the glider if it's going that fast the glider will continue to roll forward and you'll have made more slack we don't want slack we want the slack out we want that line taught okay so so you creep forward when you're close um anyway so you creep forward and when they say when they and they're watching the slack coming out and if you're you know with them some experience you you can feel it you can actually feel when all the slacks out but you wait for the the pilot to tell you they say slack is out and then you just stop okay and if you haven't gone too fast then you stop and everything's tight everything is taught at least all right so you've taken out slack slack is out all that communication was clear now it's time to start the toe now you are just waiting tow driver you are just waiting for the pilot to say the next command so once slack is out if it's an instructor talking to his students it may be a minute as they're briefing the takeoff and if you're concerned that maybe we lost radio communication you could check just don't get impatient all right it's time to start the toe so the pilot initiates this should be no surprise they say not anything else they say let's go okay that's the phras it's let's go it's not all right let's go all right here we go let's go you know it's none of that it's none of the the things you want to say it's let's go two words two syllables let's go okay when you hear let's go this is where you start you say the phrase you need to memorize the phrase is hobs industrial air Park this is the launch of a glider on a long invisible wire off of Runway whatever Runway you're on one two here we go okay so they say let's go and now it now it's all in your court you are the tow driver and you're going to start the toe just as soon as you finish your announcement and all your announcement is on the Radio is announcing to any traffic that might be in the area which includes other gliders of course if anybody is on our frequency they're everybody is now aware that they need to stay clear of this long invisible wire that's about to go up above the runway so again Hobs industrial air Park this is the launch of a glider off of on a long invisible wire off of Runway one two here we go and as soon as you're done with that announcement you can then take off now this launch is is U if you're launching the 233 well either way uh especially with the 233 uh imagine you're a non-aggressive you're you're not a grandma and you're not a and you're not a race car driver you're just a normal classic person who is sitting at a red light light turns green traffic is all clear you've already checked light turns green and you get off your brake and accelerate through the intersection so a a somewhat gentle but not uh but not slow particularly um just a just a a normal you're not going to spill everybody's drinks in the car of acceleration that's how you want to start it but it's also there's two things going on here you want to start it in a normal type of relatively easy acceleration and then imagine about the distance maybe two seconds maybe it's a one two like that just a an easy acceleration and then you transition to full pedal so you want to accelerate as fast as you can but you don't want to do it right off the getg and this is why so the 233 if we're setting on level ground here 233 has its tail way up in the air with a little tail wheel back here so it's got its tail way up in the air because it's s it's sitting on its skid and the main gear now you're pulling from a tow hook located right here so it's going to pull that way now the CG which you always rotate about the CG CG is up here so its Center of mass is up here so when you pull down low on it what does it do it wants to rotate this way and that means the tail is going to slam down on the ground so if you have the toe line tght and you just and you just accelerate hard um then the glider will it'll pull and rotate the glider it'll in the glider you'll see the nose pitch up and the tail slam down hard which can break stuff okay we don't want to do that we don't want to break stuff but we also do want good acceleration so it depends on how much headwind is here uh for one it depends on headwind and you got a tail here so glider pilot start in a 233 the glider pilot starts knowing this is going to happen with a stick forward the stick is forward then your elevator is down like this which means any wind is going to is going to keep the tail pushed up it's going to have your stick forward as nose down so it'll keep your uh your tail up nose down but you have to have air flow to do that so the reason you're doing this more gentle acceleration to start with is to get some movement going here get to get 15 or 20 miles an hour maybe it's a it's several seconds of gentle acceleration for one thing you got the momentum now the glider's momentum is forward and you have some air flow over the tail then whenever you transition when you're easy and then transition positioning with the pedal down to Full Throttle then the glider is most likely going to be able to control this better they'll have more air flow more control over their tail all right so you are accelerating to what speed to your maximum agreed upon tow speed they agreed with you in this case 45 miles hour so you are accelerating to 45 mil per hour unless you are told otherwise so if you hear nothing you're going to 45 and you're going to hold it at 45 and if that was a bad speed well bad on the pilot for saying that so um that's what you're targeting so the toe is started now most likely under normal conditions what's going to happen especially if you have an experienced uh glider pilot you'll notice that just immediately after they break ground they're going to start rotating the nose up pulling the stick back uh and you'll notice two things happen as soon as they break ground or within a half a second or so they're going to uh you're going to hear the word hold hold means whatever speed you're at hold it it doesn't mean hit your brakes and quit accelerating it just means quit accelerating look at your speedometer and hold whatever speed you got right there do your best just to hold it okay that's what that means now from there the speed control is two different things hold means hold pretty straightforward two other speed controls are to go up everything is an increments of 5 miles per hour five miles per hour okay so to go up in speed if they want you to go faster it's up up up three syllables up up up to drop 5 miles per hour is down five up up up down five up up up down five three syllables versus two syllables one of them has five in it so if you start saying things like up five that sounds like down five and on a garbled radio if all they hear is five they know you mean down right if they hear if in the garble they hear bu bu if they hear three syllables they can assume you mean up up up so they go up five so so this is the reason these are different is so that if things are not communicated really well at least they can still tell what's going on what's needed so up up up down five and hold okay now what about you as a toe driver you don't need to respond to that it's okay if you do it's probably best if you don't you need to respond to it with a throttle pedal but uh you don't need to respond on the radio let's take a look at your rear view mirror so you're driving forward you're looking at the speedometer holding your speed but you notice in the rearview mirror they took off all you can see is this toe line and it's it looks like this it's connected to the back of your pickup and you notice the toe line remember you're looking forward so you notice the toe line is off to your left and you know that the wind is blowing from right to left so you're going this way it's blowing here to here well you don't want the glider over here do you no we got power lines over here we don't want that wire coming over and hitting the power lines we actually want the wire whenever he releases you want the wire and the parachute to fall on the runway if you can get it there so you need the glider positioned over here so that when they release it blows this way okay so you know this is wrong what you want it to do you want that wire you don't know exactly what it should look like but you want it to be like that so if you see this if you see it off to the left cuz you know if you don't know you can't see the glider at this point it's way up above you uh it's behind you and above you but you can't it's out of your sight so but you can see the wire because it's tied to the back of the pickup so if you see it off to the left and you know you want it over to the right somewhere then you keep telling them uh pull left or pull right in this case pull right so you say pull right and they have it more or less straight up well that's not really straight up they have it more or less straight up and you decide no I want it over further to the right cuz I'm going to have to go traes and out in the mosquite bushes to get this parachute so you tell them pull right some more or pull right again so they pull right and it looks like this and you decide you know what that's probably good enough and you just leave it like that all right so they are telling you commands of speed control hold up up up down five you are giving them Direction commands as needed if needed of pull left pull right all right and then we come to the end of the toe at the end of the toe you're making a judgment as you're coming to the end of the runway and especially with 30 Z we have we have barriers here we can't go past that without getting hurt tearing things up so you have to decide you have to be able to slow down and Drive slowly until the parachutes on the ground before you hit the end of the runway so you need to leave plenty of space so that you can get that done without without running out of room and then all of a sudden we have a wire problem all right so you leave plenty of room uh you make a judgment and decide when you have to slow down and so you don't say it and then wait what you do as you say slowing down and when you do you get off the accelerator right then completely off of it let the truck decelerate and it will because it's pulling a glider it's pulling pretty hard so it will decelerate quickly that quick deceleration helps you because you're that's your goal right now to slow down it helps the glider pilot too instead of trying to hang on suddenly they lose air speed while hearing slowing down so glider pilot now your job at this point is to lower the nose to release to to reduce the the tension lower the nose and pop the release two pulls pop the release um toe tow driver your goal here is to is to decelerate down to like a walking speed typically um until and then W keep the keep the wire taut parachute inflated wire taut until the parachute can reach the ground okay um glider pilot this is this is a good time for uh some extra communication uh whenever you get off toe you say glider is away or glider is released that just lets them know that you're in fact off and tell them how high you are that way they have some feedback on how good that toe was so they can learn from what worked good what didn't that kind of thing and you can learn too so all right that's the end of the toe so so the toe uh the the the wire is going to be you have the tow truck here um that wire it was up here like this with a parachute on the end now as you slow down and as you slow down as the as well this as this process continues after release this wire will lay on it'll start laying out on the ground and it'll start it'll look more like this well that parachute being up in the air regardless of what's on the ground here that parachute will move with the wind and sometimes it will move very quickly With the Wind so anyway your your goal here as the driver is to drive fast just fast enough to keep this thing inflated to keep pulling on it so if it starts for instance if it's a if it's a calm day um this thing may just try to go straight down and the wire coils up it doesn't stay taut so then you end up having to spend the next half hour to an hour uncoiling The Wire by hand not fun not a good day and people are back here wanting to fly and you are not enjoying this process so it's better to always drive just fast enough to keep this thing taut now if you have a good headwind if you have a steady 10 m per hour wind you could actually stay parked and let it go all the way down because the wind is keeping it inflated it's pushing against it um but best practice is to drive usually at a walking speed or so until it's about to hit the ground and when it's about to hit when it's about to touch and again it's almost a half mile away but you can see you can time it when it's about to touch that's when you stop because if it's coming down say on a mosquite tree with thorns all over it you don't want it to come down on here and you still be driving you'll just pull it through you'll pull it in and rip it or just Lodge it in so it's really hard to get out so what you want to do is stop it as soon as it's about to go out of sight you stop right then and then it just falls on whatever it falls on much easier to retrieve okay so then so now you have the vehicle here you have a toll line that say just say it's out here somewhere all right you un you turn around unhook you get out unhook get in the pickup set your trip odometer this is important set your trip odometer to zero again then you drive4 miles stop when you've driven point4 miles um then you ought to be at the other end of the line now you don't know when it's out here in no man's land you can't see it most of the time you might be able to see it here but what you know is if youve driven 04 miles you know that it has to be more or less in that Arc so then you can just just walk out here and find it okay saves you a lot of time a lot of headache so when you get it go grab the parachute un roll up the parachute get it all secured and then in my opinion the easiest way to do this and you can reference the operations manual for this but uh there's lots of options you could pull it this way or you can do all kinds of things but what I like to do is just grab it here and just pull it by hand and walk it back to the pickup back where my truck is hook it up to the pickup and then drive it out drive it and so it will it will follow this path it'll all pull through that path right there because there's so many trees and stuff so when you go to pull it out no matter where you're at whether you pull this way or whatever you're always starting if you're pulling this way either way you're starting outside the mosques outside the brush so set your odometer again to zero and slowly drive it out do not not exceed 10 m hour if you go any faster than that you're risking wrapping the chain around something and break and pulling the wire part so just go slow until that odometer reads at least 4 miles when it reads 04 miles you know that the other end must be right there where you started and maybe go a little bit further just to make sure it's not just inside so use that odometer once you get once you've pulled out a little over point4 4 miles then you can drive you know 25 mil an hour run it down the runway when you do that though don't stop real fast do everybody a favor don't stop real fast because if you do then you're going to let that wire will then coil up because you've You' stopped so abruptly some of it over runs and coils up and then we risk another wire BR okay um okay that's what that's what that amounts to the only other thing that I want to go over is what if we have a wire BR um maybe there's an emergency a real one or a simulated what if we have a wire brake all right so so let's say the launch the launch starts normal and here we go running down the runway you you know they're up but you don't know how high they are maybe the instructor is simulating a wire brake for a student and they just pull the release maybe they're at 400 ft maybe they're at 300 ft I can tell you if you're at 300 ft you're not going to turn around because you're going to be like right here you're not going to turn around and go back you're going to land Straight Ahead either way you you want to clear the runway so that they can land wherever they need to so if you know the wind is blowing from right to left it's blowing this way then you know anything in the air that's going to be freef falling is going to be moving that direction so what side of the runway do you want to pull to that side whichever side the wind is blowing toward so if in fact they do if you're up here if you get to this point and they're at say 400 feet and do a uh and do a release that parachute is going to drift downwind so your job then is to treat it like the end of a normal toe when you realize hey they've released um now if you've realized they've least or the wire is broken when you know that's happened you just drive you move over to the downwind side and and then and then just let the parachute come down like normal or you just kind of do like normal and look for it if you can't ever find the parachute it's probably because it the wire broke it's not coming down with the line and so now you've got a lot of work to do anyway but the point is you move to the downwind side that way if the glider needs needs the runway way to land in front of them you are out of the way and hopefully all the wire and stuff that was suspended in the air is all also on that side so that's what you do just go to the downwind side of the runway and and if the glider is connected if the if the parachute is on just treat it like a normal toe as it's coming down you just keep it keep the wire taut and stop in time for it to touch and uh let's see again let's just go over a couple of terminologies again when you uh let's go through the through the radio calls toe pilot or the tow driver says ready to take out slack pilot says go ahead and take out slack driver Slack's coming out or taking out slack and then the slack is out and the pilot says slack is out now it's waiting until the Pilot says let's go or okay let's go very clearly let's go Hobs industrial air Park and this is the driver now driver says Hobs industrial air Park this is the launch of a glider off of Runway 1 two or 3 0 this is the launch of a glider on a long invisible wire off of Runway one two here we go and you take off you start going like we talked about slow at first uh and then and then harder acceleration and then speed control is done by hold up up up down five up up up down five and you give them directional control based on the wind and your judgment of pull left or pull right and then when you're done with a toe when you don't you're running out of room you say slowing down and you slow down okay uh the only other exception to the acceleration thing is is on the 233 if we have enough people and we agree to do it somebody can get back here and push the horizontal stabilizer down to the ground and and hold the tail on the ground in that case there's no slamming because it's already there in that case you can actually accelerate you can give it hard acceleration right from the beginning which will make a really nice toe now again don't try to break the line you pull so hard You Yank something apart there is such a thing there is such a problem but but you can be pretty aggressive on the acceleration then and it makes a better toe But be sure you know that they're doing that and that's it [Music]

Channel: Layton Soaring

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Id: 8XXi3p7OHJ0

Length: 39min 51sec (2391 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 03 2024