Originally Posted by
old,not bold
It's many decades since I flew a glider, evidenced by the fact that my ab initio instructor at Lasham was Derek Piggott, but I do recall "brakes in and locked" as an essentiial check.
I've come in though, only to go back a little way in the thread to a post which said:
I always started aerotow takeoff roll with airbrakes open and closed them when I have good roll control.
and ask; "Why?", out of sheer curiosity.
Some gliders have very poor roll control at low speeds, and an aerotow takes time to accelerate to where it's adequate. A winch launch OTOH... But in this case it's deliberate, the pilot know what they were doing and why, and would have had the airbrake lever in their hand. of course that means they didn't have a hand to devote to the release knob...