Bill Daniels wrote:

So why can't you get away XC from your winch?

Our runway is 2000ft. We can use about 2300ft of cable which gives us
1300ft of height if wind conditions are ideal, more typically 1150ft and
sometimes only 1000ft if conditions are poor. This just isn't enough to
reach our nearest thermal, simple as that. Not everybody is operating
from a 5000ft runway and not every airfield was placed with thermals in
mind.