Derek,

You have identified a major problem in the first paragraph. It is hard to create a "critical mass" when the state where you live covers 83,642 square miles and only has a population density of 15.64 people/sq mile. The area of England is only 50,346 square mile; however, has a population density of 1,015/sq mile. Our density is only 1.6 percent of England's.

As a result of the low population density it is hard to form a viable club. Locally forming a club has been tried on at least three separate occasions all of which resulted in failure. Consequently all the local gliders are privately owned.

The large geographic provides a great opportunity to fly cross-country. All the local pilots fly cross-country. As a result we seldom have more then 10 launches a day. This makes aero-tows the most practical launch form.

Maybe this will help you understand why the Western US has not embraced the wench as our primary launch mode.

Respectfully,

Wayne
http://www.soaridaho.com/


"Derek Copeland" wrote in message ...
Hi Wayne,

It seems to me that you need to build up a critical mass of expertise, and
clubs with winch launching facilities in the US. In the UK I can visit 4
other clubs within a 50 mile radius of my home club who also winch launch,
so we can share experience and learn from each other. Germany is very
similar.

As I and others have pointed out before, you already have most of the
necessary ingredients to build good quality winches in the States,
particularly lots of vehicles with big powerful V8 engines and good
automatic gearboxes that can be transplanted into winches. We in Europe
actually import such things from you. Most of our winches use big block
Chevys or big secondhand diesel engines from trucks or earth movers.

Even with an almost technically perfect winch (nothing is ever totally
perfect), you will still have the occasional cable break, weak link break,
technical failure, or driver error, not to mention wing drops due to gusts.
Safe winch launching is basically about being mentally prepared to deal
with such problems as they arise. In the UK our pre-flight check list
includes an E for Eventualities, where you pre-brief yourself as to how to
deal with all the likely failures and problems that might occur during any
sort of launch, including aerotows.

Suggest that you have a read of:

http://www.gliding.co.uk/bgainfo/saf...hlaunching.htm

By the way, I learnt wire launching by autowing, where about every fifth
launch was a cable break, especially as the cables became worn from
dragging them along an asphalt runway. This was far from a technically
perfect solution, but I got very good at dealing with launch failures and
never came close to killing myself. I actually had a launch failure on my
first and third solos on the same day, with only the second one going full
term to a vaguely respectable height of about 1000 feet. If anyone tells
you that autotowing is a great way of launching gliders, they are lying!
We get at least 1600 feet from our winch launches off a much shorter run.
It was still good fun though. Once we had gone solo we were also expected
to drive the towcars, after a little bit of training.

Cheers,
Derek Copeland