Lowest safe speed gains most height -- twenty years experience with Bluenose
winch


"Neil" wrote in message
...
Ok, I could probably arrange with the winch driver to experiment, but is
there any definitive guidance on getting the greatest height off a winch
launch? (eg. Skylaunch).

i.e. if I'm "driven" at the higher end of the speed range acceptable to
my gliders placarding, will I get higher or lower than a lower speed
launch? I used to consider faster meant higher, but last weekend a most
experienced colleague said you'd end less high, as you spend less time
gaining height. I'm sure there's a set of graphs that would show a polar
curve type trade-off, but is there a simple way of looking at this?

Neil