Paul Voight <<flyhighpaul>>
writes:

I watched your landing video a few times today. Nice footage. I'd
be careful with that momentary "let-go of the control frame altogether" when
raising your hands higher in ground effect.  It'll bite ya some day.

As an additional comment, when Ryan Voight and I do landing clinics. towing the
students high enough to have the student have to make a more complicated
approach will illuminate lots of pilot's problems stemming from bad approach
technique. Landing after a straight tow with no turns only works on a portion of
the "landing skill set".

If all pilots would set up to be straight into the wind from the height of that
tow most of their landing issues would be fixed. Low turns  mixed with hand
transitions and round-outs, all too late in the landing sequence, are a common
thread we see in pilots who have landing issues.

Mitch held a landing clinic last year at the East Coast
Championships, where indeed pilots were towed high enough to do an approach. You
can find the discussion and then videos starting here:
http://ozreport.com/16.131#0.

Mitch Shipley<<elektratow>>
writes:

Thanks for taking time to share your perspective! Agree completely
about skills needed/learned/exposed during higher approaches.

What I do is tailor the tow height/approach to where the student is skill wise
(which is hard to determine with “experienced” pilots I just met based on their
view/evaluation/articulation of their own skill level!) Or the real estate
available to execute the tow. In this video, Davis jumped in for one tow when I
was working with two hang II students, one of which was an aero tow student of
mine that had never landed on his feet. He had his hands full just trying to
execute the mechanics of a proper foot landing while flying straight.

After low experience pilots can execute a tow and landing flying straight (and
the proper climb rate/pin off altitude is definitely part of the skill set that
needs to be learned) then higher tows with approaches are added. I learned the
“straight flight” lesson after I suggested to one of my landing clinic students
that he tow higher and execute a full approach. His lack of proper spatial
awareness resulted in him pinning off low, slipping a 360 and making me very
nervous. Turned out fine, but I now am more careful on adding in the approach
elements.

When towing experienced pilots I usually have them tow high enough and do the
full approach, as done at the ECC last year. Even then, however, care must be
exercised as some pilot still have weak spatial awareness and pin off too low
(pin off early or weak climb) and still try to crank one around. The low pin off
is a hazard that comes with using a ground based tow system as opposed to higher
foot launch or aerotow. That said, I like the ease and speed with which pilots
get multiple practice landings.

In post landing clinic critiques from students ( I always ask them what went
well or poorly!) universal good points are 1) the number of practice landings
they got (typically 8-12) and 2) the frame by frame, high resolution video
review of each landing/approach.

Thanks again for the input. Hope to see you during my travels this spring and
summer!