On Nov 7, 1:26*pm, bildan wrote:
On Nov 7, 1:30*pm, Darryl Ramm wrote:

A good old
towplane with relatively understandable ownership costs and utility
would be my first choice.

I wouldn't strongly disagree but there are significantly less than 200
- perhaps as few as 160 - tow planes in the US and little chance of
increasing that number in the short term. *If the sport were to
suddenly expand, we may find ourselves waiting a long time for tows.
The last 1800' tow I bought from a commercial operator cost $55 which
is absolutely reducing flying.

Moving training to winches makes sense especially since the ASK-21 is
arguably the worlds best winch glider. *(The 2-33 is arguably the
worst.)

I agree, but by "first choice" meant within the current ecosystem.
Going to self launch motorgliders for training to me is going the
reverse direction than needed. Not that I don't think a newish
training fleet is important - I absolutely believe (and have seen
first hand) people with alternate things bidding for their time, and
with money in their pocket, are turned off but older training gliders.
I suspect soaring in the USA needs to make a larger systemic move
towards winch launching to lower costs and I'm not sure how that
happens. The largest issue I see is suitability of launch sites and
that often correlates with ownership or exclusive access to suitably
sized areas of land close to population centers. Several of my
favorite glider locations you also would not get far XC on winch
launches, coastal effects and valley inversions often dictate long
tows, so they are just sited poorly for winch use even if it was
otherwise possible.

While there are some concerns about towplane supply you should be able
to buy a quite serviceable starting at ~2x the price of a full rebuild
on a modern motorglider engine :-)


Darryl