Tow releases

Releases Since 1952 Tost company has manufactured releases for gliders. The first product was the manual actuated nose release type “BUG”. 1953 followed the first Tost safety release (Universal), that has been installed near to the centre-of-gravity. Its automatic release at a defined cable angle made the winch launch safe. Tost releases are the standard worldwide for safe gliding starts for all types of starts and are being operated “from Australia to Cyprus”. In total, more than 73.000 units have been produced. All are still being serviced, also those units from the very beginning. Most of the releases are still serviceable and even in service for further decades.

History of Tost releases
During the decades, Tost releases have been developed further and optimised as well.
The sequence of the release types is as follows:

• For the nose and tail releases: BUG - E 72 - E 75 - E 85
• For the centre-of-gravity releases: UNIVERSAL - KK - G 72 - G 73 - G 88

One important step to high dimensional accuracy and rigidity of the releases was the use of precision casting components: hook, segment, ring automatic as well as fine cast release housing as successor of the welded release housing (up to type E 72 and G 72). When used in vintage gliders, please always check the installation space: narrow release brackets possibly may not allow the installation of the latest release types G 73/G 88 and E 75/E 85, which need a bit more space. A further milestone was the increase of the cable force from 11,7 kN for the pre[1]decessor types to 14,1 kN for the E 85 and G 88 series. The exchange of the elder release types against the recent ones has always been guaranteed through the retention of the outer dimensions and fixation holes of the releases.