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Paul Olson was here on Thursday from the Whitewater hang gliding club with instructions to get instruction from Steve Wendt on how to tow safely so that they won't have another of the kind of accident that they've already had with their scooter tow setup in Wisconsin this year (perhaps we can hear from Rik and Paul about that). Steve brought out the Honda Elite 250 to more closely match the 125 at Whitewater and to make it just a little more difficult to be the scooter tow operator.

On Thursday evening Steve and Rich Cizauskas were the wind dummies and later I got to join them for five flights (and one aborted flight) before the sun went down. The wind had been strong all day, but went to zero at 6 PM so we had great conditions for flying the Condor 330 and the Falcon 195.

The idea was, could Paul keep us within five feet of the ground even though the throttle was very touchy on the 250. (Steve uses it almost exclusively for higher tows with experienced pilots.) Our job was to play little tricks on Paul to see if he would catch us and do the right thing. What's the right thing? Almost always to set the pilot down.

I got my first launches since my crash on Mt. Borah. I wasn't sure that I could even run fast enough to keep up with the scooter tow.  I can ride pretty fast on my bicycle, but I haven't been running around too much with my not yet fully recovered leg.

I hooked up to the Condor 330, leveled the wings and said "Clear." Paul twisted the accelerator and the rope starting pulling me and the glider. The V-bridle is connected to the harness and to the glider so the glider and I get pulled at the same time and my job was to keep up.

I was surprised right away about how easy it was to run. My job was to let the glider was to let the glider fly at trim, hand off if I felt comfortable with that, and so I just let the glider go, releasing my hands from the down tubes. The glider was pulled so I didn't have to push it along. This wasn't going to help me directly with the launch issues I wanted to deal with, but my first step was to be able to just run with the glider.

It's easy to run and fly without your hands on the downtubes in this configuration (glider being towed) with the scooter tow operator keeping you as low to the ground as possible with no winds to upset the glider. It is also a lot of fun to just hang there and get the feel how the glider flies on its own.

The release is a bicycle brake type release half way up the right down tube and the idea is to release about three quarters of the way down the runway (marked with a cone) toward the turn around pulley. The brake handle is right next to your hand so it is easy to hit the release. You want to release the rope when it is tight so that the rope goes away from you and so that it is sure to be released.

I hiked the glider back, sometimes running with it with my hands in the grapevine grip, just to get some practice running in this configuration. After three tows I let Rich take another flight, before I took the Condor back. We  switched back and forth as Steve helped Paul and watched how he did.

On my next time up I decided to run and hold the glider down by keeping my grapevine grip on the downtubes. Steve had talked about teaching students to keep the glider on the ground and the nose down after they learn how to launch, and this is just what I wanted to do. I didn't tell Paul just to see how he would react to the fact that the glider didn't get off the ground as fast as it had been. Would he try to over power the pilot and pull him into the air (the exactly wrong thing to do)?

I told Paul "clear," and he pulled the tow line up tight and I ran down the field. It was easy to keep the glider on the ground and I just pulled in to keep the nose down. After a dozen steps (running), Steve had Paul stop the tow. I felt that Steve had done that because Paul was trying to over power me and get me off the ground and I yelled out that I was trying to stay on the ground.

But that wasn't the issue. I had forgotten to hook in after I took over the glider from Rick. Each of us had our own light weight training harnesses (no connections to the legs beyond leg loops) and I "never" unhook my harness from the glider. Of course, here we are in a new situation and I didn't hook in. That's why Steve told Paul to stop, because Paul missed the fact that I didn't hook in . Steve didn't and he wanted to see if Paul would see it before I launched or would stop the tow after I launched unhooked. He didn't and Steve stopped the tow.

After hooking in I got to launch right away again, keeping the nose down, my hands in a grapevine grip pulling back forcefully on the down tubes and having a good long run until I finally decided to let the bar out a bit and get into the air. This made it a bit difficult for Paul to correctly judge how much to put on the gas, and I got up to fifteen feet.

The sun was beginning to set. Paul was getting much better with the throttle and learning lots of new lessons on how to safely tow pilots. It is so many little details. Steve had taken a flight and deliberately went way to the right to try to force Paul to put him down. Paul failed to do so and Steve released just before he ran into my trailer. Paul was thinking that because it was Steve he would "save" himself in time. Steve emphasized again and again, if things go wrong, just put the pilot down, because he is already low.

Of course, you might want to give the pilot a few seconds to save himself, say make a little turn to get back in line. So scooter tow operators aren't born, they must be trained and learn how to do all the little things that make for safe instruction and towing (and where better to learn, but at BlueSky). One thing that is crucial is for the tow operator to be next to the pilot when they take off, both for safer towing, and also to be able to see what the pilot is doing in order to be able to make a good critique of the pilot's efforts.

On the last tow of the day, as the sun went behind the trees, I took up the Falcon 195. Again I wondered if I could run fast enough with this "small" glider with the smaller wheels. I wanted to pull it in and keep it on the ground for a good run before getting into the air. It turned out to be no problem. I ran for a good ways while pulling in. I hoped that I was in the grapevine grip during the whole run, but without a video of the tow, I can't be sure. I'll be videoing my instruction from now on, I hope.

I expect to progress through a series of steps:

1. Run with Falcon 195 keeping the glider on the ground for a long time.

2. Run with the Falcon 195 being pulled just from the shoulders and not from the keel. This means I have to push the glider with my shoulders and still keep the nose at the right attitude.

3. Run with the Falcon 195 with my Moyes Matrix Race harness instead on the light harness with no bits of the harness to get in the way of my legs and feet. Maybe go back a few steps to the Condor 330 or to pulling the glider from the keel until I am sure that I feel comfortable running with the harness.

4. Run with my Wills Wing T2-144 with my harness.

In between I will be running on the flat lawn here without being towed just to see how it goes and to see if I am ready to run while being towed.