On Thursday, September 10, 2015 at 3:37:22 PM UTC+3, GB wrote:
It takes a village to launch a sailplane, a pair of sneakers to launch a PG.

Not a whole village :-)

There are many many times I've wanted to fly on a day that the club is not "open". All I've needed is a tow pilot. Two is enough to push the tow plane and glider out of the hanger, get them onto the runway, and do a wing-down takeoff using the radio for "take up slack" and "all out" signals.

There is the question of who does the hookup. I guess the safest is for either pilot to do it before the tug starts its engine, but it's a lot quicker for the glider pilot to do it before getting in, with the towplane warming up just off to the side facing crosswind, with plenty of slack rope.