Winch launch gliding sites

[Pegpilot]

Hi guys

A hoary old chestnut, I know, but can I remind the GA community to avoid overflying winch launch gliding sites below the max launch heights specified on your half mil charts ? I was duty instructor at Channel Gliding Club (Waldershare Park, near Dover) today and during my stint watched no fewer than three light aircraft clearly headed to/from France pass directly overhead at or less than 1500' agl. Yes, I know Waldershare is not protected by an ATZ, but the chart clearly stipulates winch launching to a max of 2.4k amsl (2k agl). If you fancy a winch cable through your wing then fine, but if not then PLEASE give winch sites a wide berth. Whether by overflying at an altitude greater than the max shown on the chart, or by flying around us I really don't care, but do please take heed...

Cheers

Pegpilot

[McGoonagall]

Bit of a no brainer really but it does need advertising from time to time. I seem to remember a YouTube video a few years ago (cant find it now) where the owner of a nice shiny Cirrus took a cable in the prop, and had to deploy the BRS....

[David Roberts]

Only yesterday I was thermalling (in my glider!) about 1/2 mile S of Aston Down, Gloucestershire, home of the Cotswold Gliding Club which is a winch launch club with winch cables up to 3,000 ft AGL, usually on RWY 03/21. I was at 1300 ft AGL Aston Down, and a light aeroplane passed directly overhead the airfield, climbing, but was no more than 1600 ft AGL above the site. Assume he was climbing out of Kemble. Unfortunately I was not close enough to see its registration.

It is a perennial problem.

[Tigger_Too]

Not a Cirrus, and not a winch launch, but it gets the message across just as well:

(Stick with it until the 45 second point)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=aG4nIeyaoek&feature=related

[The Fenland Flyer]

It's a problem at drop zones too. I've see many pilot's just fly straight over at Chatteris, even when parachutists are falling I assume gliding and parachute zones are not on some GPSs?

Gliders also infringe the drop zone, a few weeks back the fully loaded Twin Otter was stuck circling at 14,000ft while a glider was thermaling blissfully unaware over the drop zone .

[chevvron]

Unfortunately a few (very few) glider pilots take the attitude 'it's class G airspace and I'm a glider, so he keeps out of my way'.

[FlyingSportsman]

Have this problem sometimes at Kenley, inbound GA traffic to biggin hill passes over and uses the airfield as a sort of unoffical VRP despite the fact they are warned by biggin that it is believed to be active. When will people learn!

FS

[execExpress]

"Bit of a no brainer really but it does need advertising from time to time. I seem to remember a YouTube video a few years ago (cant find it now) where the owner of a nice shiny Cirrus took a cable in the prop, and had to deploy the BRS....

"

Do you have any references for that? Not heard of any aircraft catching a winch cable in the prop, and certainly not an SR20/SR22 Cirrus if that is the aircraft you are referrring to?

Sadly, winch launch sites being shown on charts is not enough. They ought to be in the GPS driven moving map databases too. Any BGA safety people interested to encourage that to happen?

[gpn01]

Originally Posted by chevvron

Unfortunately a few (very few) glider pilots take the attitude 'it's class G airspace and I'm a glider, so he keeps out of my way'.

Right of way (legal, perceived or whatever) isn't the issue that this thread is about. The fact remains that too many power pilots cruise blissfully unaware of the risks that they're taking by overflying a winch launch site below the height which appears on the half mil map.

[david viewing]

Fenland:

Chatteris is not in the 430, at least. And it is quite hard to spot, even in good weather. All those rivers and drains look the same....

Not in any way making excuses for those pilots who just fly over, but may I suggest that the para dropping pilots could respond to passing pilots who make traffic calls to the Chatteris frequency? You can often hear unintelligible traffic, but no-one ever responds to my traffic calls with a position report or anything like that.

Not having a go at Chatteris, but just trying to be constructive.

[chevvron]

I'm not sure but I believe most GPS databases are provided by Jeppesen and there's the rub; it is not Jeppesen company policy to depict glider cable launch hazards.

[Jan Olieslagers]

Quality control for navigation data

Perhaps this should be the subject of a separate thread. I have indeed long been bewildered by the accepted authority of one commercial company: pilots preparing their flights seem to feel confident to satisfy the legal requirements by consulting the information as published by one single commercial company.

"Yes but I checked Jepp, I'm sure I got all the relevant data" is just as meaningless as "but this plane is from a renowned manufacturer, what need for annuals?" OK, that comparison is not entirely correct, planes do suffer from use and from load and from bad handling, which is not the case for data. Still, I trust my idea is clear: navigation data, whether on paper or in any kind of electronic format, should be checked and approved by an official body, and today it isn't.

[chevvron]

Years ago I was told by the secretary of the UK Flight Safety Comittee that they were very concerned about the info Jeppesen publishes as it is not checked by an independent auditor; they supposedly 'self check' their own publications. I've put 'health warnings' about Jepp in these pages before.

[IO540]

Years ago I was told by the secretary of the UK Flight Safety Comittee that they were very concerned about the info Jeppesen publishes as it is not checked by an independent auditor; they supposedly 'self check' their own publications

Gosh, that explains why the earth's surface is littered with wreckage of 747s

That's the kind of statement I would expect to get from an agency who is far more concerned to cover its back end than to promote safety.

There is very nearly zero evidence that errors in Jepp stuff have caused accidents. I recall there was some litigation in the USA...

Against this, we have CAA VFR charts with 1000ft towers missing off them. Yeah, right, independently audited Just how often do they have to do this massive task, involving the mapping of the whole known aviation universe? Just once a year! And they still foul it up. Even the Bournemouth radar frequency was wrong.

And they publish approach plates which don't show the decision heights. The text is too small to be easily readable in A5 size, but nobody uses A4 in the cockpit. When I asked their head of mapping once (face to face) why they don't produce them as A5 and with DHs so they can be used directly by pilots he told me they are not in the business of competing with commercial providers...

Jepp is not without its faults - far from it - and they are an arrogant enough company to draw a lot of criticism without even trying. But they are all there is, once you get away from the Blackbushe-Bembridge burger run. Their worst "crime" is the failure to depict UK Class A airspace correctly in the database used by practically every GPS manufacturer. But the GPS makers are equally to blame for that. As is the CAA for not making the maps freely available in an electronic format, as a multi-layer database (something which every European CAA does too).

Independent auditing is an irrelevance. Ask anybody concerned with one of the biggest scams in business: ISO9000

[snapper1]

Maps

As the originator of this thread said, this is a hoary old chestnut; powered aircraft often overfly gliding sites below winch launch height. Fellow members at my club have often wondered how such a simple mistake can be made. We've come to the conclusion that pilots have become too reliant on GPS data and just dont use maps any more. Comments on this thread seem to suport that assumption. The remedy is simple; look at the map. All gliding sites are there

[Rod1]

The sites are on PocketFMS.

Rod1

[2 sheds]

Quite seriously, I wonder if many PPLs just do not stop to understand what is meant by a launch cable, what it looks like, how a glider is launched etc in their rush to beat the exam system and get their licence. It might be an idea - for various reasons - if there were a requirement for so many glider launches before being introduced to powered flight.

2 s

[gaxan]

If I had my way, PPl training would include going solo in a glider first!

[bad bear]

If I had my way, PPl training would include going solo in a glider first!

the problem is that once they discovered gliding they might not go back to solo the aeroplane?

bb

[kibbet]

Quite seriously, I wonder if many PPLs just do not stop to understand what is meant by a launch cable, what it looks like, how a glider is launched etc in their rush to beat the exam system and get their licence. It might be an idea - for various reasons - if there were a requirement for so many glider launches before being introduced to powered flight.

I agree. Until you actually see, from the air, a glider launch, it's difficult to imagine the dynamics involved. I fly out of Cambridge, a couple of months ago I passed South of Gransden about 3000', my instructor says, "check out the winch launch." Of course, I'm looking low and near the upwind end. Once I find it, it's midfield, high and appears, to me, to be pointing directly up. (Must give it a try one day) The aircraft was hard enough to see, no chance to see the cable. I'll be keeping well clear.

kib.