At 13:33 13 July 2008, Bill Daniels wrote :-

The Skylaunch is a cosmetic update of the 1960's US
Gerhlein winches and suffers from the same major shortcomings. If you
still like it, save $50k-$75k by
spending a couple of thousand for an old Gerhlein and
fix it up. If you'd like a modern, state of the art
winch, take a look at these from US winch buiders:

http://www.romansdesign.com/ and
http://www.hydrowinch.com

Bill Daniels


Hi Bill,

I'm not particularly promoting Skylaunch! It's just that Bill asked if
anybody had information on professionally built, and self build winches,
and we as readers and contributors to these forums, are surely doing what
he asks for if we throw him all the information and links etc. we can, so
he can study the situation for himself. I look on comments like yours as a
positive aid to Bill's information gathering, so long as they are unbiased
and accurate!

With this in mind I would be pleased if you could explain in more specific
detail about what you personally found are the "shortcomings" of the
'Skylaunch' winch - rather than just just leave it at a vague reference
to mysterious "shortcomings.

I found this staccato comment perplexing because I have been driving
winches since 1972 and the Skylaunch 8200 since 2001, launched thousands
of gliders with the Skylaunch and trained many new winch drivers. Yet,
after all these launches, I have yet to find these mysterious
"shortcomings" that you speak of!

If you have had a lot experience of driving Skylaunch winches, but have
specific problems with launching or the winch, I for one would take much
interest if you could explain them. There may be a reason for your
problems and something as simple as a different method of operation might
be all that is needed to solve them! Maybe you need a little guidance on
setting-up, driving, or maintenance, etc.

On the other hand, if you are making a statement regarding certain
"shortcomings" (that I have not personally found) without actually
having had experience of these winches, and your opinion is actually only
based on secondhand comments, it is not paticularly fair to the
manufacturer, or to Bill, who is trying to gather what accurate
information there is available.



Tony Clark