Banner tow is often done in too much of a rush. It's a paid gig that only goes for an hour or sometimes less. So, picking up the banner as fast as possible is the order of the day. Which leads to unstabilized or poorly stabilized approach to pick up when you really need to be extra-stabilized.
Most Citabria pilots tape the hook to the left strut near the window so you can take off without dragging on the runway. They don't like that. Then, after in the air, you reach out and unstrap the hook from the strut and throw it down and away from the tail. It can get snagged on the elevator then. Or, after you get a good hook deployment, you go around to pick up the banner, and strike the hook on the ground before the banner loop, then it bangs up and around and can strike something on the tail.
The best instruction I got was to S-l-o-w-d-o-w-n when doing banner ops. Don't rush the take off, don't rush the hook deploy, don't rush the pick up, and don't try to climb out too fast with the banner on. Just take your time, and make sure you do it right once.
I picked up one banner, and tower usually comes on and says; 'banner tow 3Mike Yankee, good banner, climb to 1500 feet' (or something to let you know). If you aren't at a tower, you have the ground helper call 'good banner' or something to let you know. Well, tower came on and said ' uh - banner tow, we're going to need a mirror, the letters are backwards.' Sure enough, the tow pole was hooked to the wrong end of the lettering. Had to go around and drop it then wait for them to run the pole around to the right side, and set the pickup loop again. Doh...
I lost track of how many times I stood there looking, dumbfounded, and said the same thing.
