Interesting post Steve.
As an over 50 newbie to soaring flying out of a club that operates 7 days a
week during the soaring season, I thought a self launcher was only useful on
days when the flight line gets long. Hearing horror stories about increased
fatalities when landing out associated with the motor (waiting too long,
failing to start, etc.) I didn't think there was a whole lot of value for
the extra $. Your post puts a different spin on it - accelerated learning,
safely exploring marginal conditions, etc. When you consider the cost of 100
tows a year, and SLs (an Apis anyway) running about an extra $20K USD, you
can amortize the motor over ten years or so with saved tow fees (which keep
going up). Sure, maintenance will cost more, but life is short.

Wad

It has provided me the opportunity to fly when
the weather is okay, good or flat out amazing, as well as to try things
when
the weather is poor but you are just curios if there's any way you might
actually be able to get somewhere... I feel that I have been able to
accelerate my learning curve, by
using my self launcher to simply gather different experiences and even to
mitigate certain risks and allow myself to move forward to continue
learning
and get to where I want to go.