CFIs

Thank you all for your quick and thoughtful responses. Every thought
expressed has value. I own a good winch, but have not made even one
launch with it.. I need help.
Yes, the 2-33 back seat is tough compared to our DG 500. 5 hours in
the DG is better than 30 mins in the 2-33. Fifteen 2-33's (if they
could be found), roughly equals the investment in another DG. The
economics have are out of whack.
I'll study every one of your words againand again. Our strip is only
600 ft wide by one mile and we have done auto tows. Fishing the line
out of the desert weeds creats time and labor lost, but the tows were
successful.
Please continue to think about creating more instructors and
rewarding them in a better way.
More instructors would solve the problem of only one instructor trying
to fit in some personal flying as well. I dropped out of a club for
that exact reason. Fred.

Fred, where are you located?

At 18:36 29 December 2007, Fredsez wrote:
Thank you all for your quick and thoughtful responses.
Every thought
expressed has value. I own a good winch, but have not
made even one
launch with it.. I need help.
Yes, the 2-33 back seat is tough compared to our DG
500. 5 hours in
the DG is better than 30 mins in the 2-33. Fifteen
2-33's (if they
could be found), roughly equals the investment in another
DG. The
economics have are out of whack.
I'll study every one of your words againand again.
Our strip is only
600 ft wide by one mile and we have done auto tows.
Fishing the line
out of the desert weeds creats time and labor lost,
but the tows were
successful.
Please continue to think about creating more instructors
and
rewarding them in a better way.
More instructors would solve the problem of only one
instructor trying
to fit in some personal flying as well. I dropped out
of a club for
that exact reason. Fred.

Fred,

If your strip is 600' x about 5,280', you should have the potential
for an awesome winching site. I'm basing that on the club I belonged
to in Germany. I'm looking at it now in Google Earth and see that
it's about 300 feet wide and the "useable" runway is only about 2,000
feet long. Beyond the 2,000' is a bit of "no man's land" that is
rough and not landable, but continue beyond that and that is where the
winch is set. The winch ends up about 4,300 feet beyond the far end
of the runway. The actual winch set up site can, and has, been used
for emergency landing strip. Yes, it's short, but the approaches are
clear, and landing there, say, in case of rope break, was not a
problem. In the Google Earth image, one winch can be seen and some
gliders are visible on the field.

When I flew there, back in the mid 1980's, two clubs operated there.
Our club had one winch, with two drums, and the other club had the
same setup. Both winches would operate all weekend long, but just
take turns on launching. It didn't take too long to launch a glider
and reel in the steel cable. The two winches were separated by about
200'. Within the 300' wide runway, we had three runways: the outside
ones were for winch launching and the center strip was for aerotows
and landing, generally.

Rarely did I see the steel cable, tensioned by a parachute after
release, get blown over into the higher scrub. In fact, I don't think
I remember that at all (yea, it was just too damn long ago...)

But with a winch here in America, there surely will be a problem of
finding winch "certified" CFI-G's plus someone that knows not only how
to operate a winch, but knows how to teach winch operation. I would
gladly try to learn to operate a winch, if we had one. At least, I
hope, the insurance company won't require 250 to 300 hours of winch
operation time before agreeing to insure as they do in a power plane
before one can get on the insurance for flying the towplane. At our
club in Germany, I think one was required to operate the winch at
least 100 times with a winch instructor before they could operate the
winch solo. That's a LOT more instruction to operate the winch than
to learn to winch launch in the glider!

Launch heights: Seems like only about 400 meters in the heavy G103,
but I could get between 600 and 700 meters on the K8. Seems like up
to 600 meters in the Standard Astir.

In my present club, we do try to reward the instructors, who are
volunteers, with some "free" glider time and some "free" aerotows.
Generally, club members pay rent on the gliders. Rates are, I think:
$12/hour for L13
$18/hour for L33
$40/hour for HpH 304C.

But instructors can fly for free for one flight per month, I think.
Seems like they can get a break on tow fees, too, but I'm not sure of
details. Even so, we generally don't have enough instructors.

Ray Lovinggood




On Dec 29, 1:35 pm, fredsez wrote:
Thank you all for your quick and thoughtful responses. Every thought
expressed has value. I own a good winch, but have not made even one
launch with it.. I need help.
Yes, the 2-33 back seat is tough compared to our DG 500. 5 hours in
the DG is better than 30 mins in the 2-33. Fifteen 2-33's (if they
could be found), roughly equals the investment in another DG. The
economics have are out of whack.
I'll study every one of your words againand again. Our strip is only
600 ft wide by one mile and we have done auto tows. Fishing the line
out of the desert weeds creats time and labor lost, but the tows were
successful.
Please continue to think about creating more instructors and
rewarding them in a better way.
More instructors would solve the problem of only one instructor trying
to fit in some personal flying as well. I dropped out of a club for
that exact reason. Fred.