Amazing Winching Weekend in Utah

The Utah Soaring Association (USA) held a winch training camp at Nephi this last weekend with our newly purchased and rebuilt winch. We invited Karl Striedieck and his brother Walter to come and train 4 of our cfig's over the course of 2.5 days. We ended up with 4 club cfig's who are now winch launch endorsed and who can help teach the rest of our club members how to safely fly a winch launch. We also got 3 club members fully trained on driving the winch and who can now also teach others to become drivers. Another 4 club members got a chance to drive the winch under supervision. We really only went half days if you take out all the time standing around chatting and still flew 78 launches!

The coolest part, other than getting to rocket up into the sky at crazy velocities, was that during the weekend we were able to introduce winch launching to 15 other club members who had never experienced it (or even seen it in person) before. They each got to experience a launch or two and we think we hooked many of them into wanting to get their own winch training and endorsement. Everyone I talked to left very impressed and willing to participate in winching in the future.

We proved winches can be a FAST way to launch a LOT of gliders or the same glider many times at a fraction of the cost! With a RZR side by side running the line back to the glider, we were able to get consistent 6 minute times from one launch to the next using one Twin Astir and 4,000' of rope! Yes, 10 launches an hour! On the last day we were also able to demonstrate that you can do the whole operation with only a winch driver and a wing runner (yours truly for most of the day) safely and effectively. I would run the wing and immediately jump in the golf cart as the glider was climbing and start down the side of the runway to retrieve the rope once it was dropped. With the slower golf cart, we were still getting 9-10 minute turn-arounds (6 launches an hour)! When we plan for contest tows we plan on 12-15 minute tows, so again, winches can be very efficient both in not needing extra personnel and time between launches. Of course a few more bodies are nice but not necessary.

Karl and Walter were amazing instructors and were very gracious with their time and sharing of their knowledge. Thank you guys for helping get us become more winch launch self-sufficient.

We also must thank and acknowledge Bill Daniels for all his help getting us started with winching earlier in the season. Without his advice and huge amount of help, we would have never taken the leap of faith to purchase an old warn out winch and almost completely overhaul or replace every component. Bill spent countless hours helping us to get to the point where we can really start going now as a club. Thanks Bill!

Here is a quick 15 second video of one of our launches:
https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10206694768880766

In a nutshell, we had a fun and safe weekend flying $3,500 worth of aero tows for only $100 in fuel and $100 in rope reserves while putting big smiles on lots of faces.

Bruno - B4