Glider check & ‘20kg’ line length resetting.

While getting ready to fly from the camp at Mount hill after lunch on day two, Alan Coffin takes out the time to do a line check and length reset. Club members not sure about the (fairly simple) procedures just ask and I will go over this with them next time they are out, it takes about 20-30 mins.

Alan checking the cloth attachment tabs and comparing the lengths both before & after applying a load to see if the line had shrunk.

 After 80+ hours of flying there was a noticable shrinkage in line lengths on the glider due to ‘relaxing’ of the woven outer ‘tube’ that protects the inner from UV and physical abrasion, in addition there was on loading a failure of one single brake ‘fan’ line where the outer had been damaged some time in the past, this (one of the final thin lines) snapped at approximantly 10-15kg load….. but after removing the broken line and a quick test flight was not enough to cause any concern over flying while the spare line is on order.

The main common sign of lines needing re-set is: Does the glider seem to ‘hang back’ when ground handling at launch more that it used to? 

This entry was posted on 10/09/2007 at 06:18 pm and is filed under Glider Checks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.