(Mark James Boyd) wrote
I spent a good portion of the past few days looking into
auto-tow launching. After some fairly extensive
searching, I found that, as far as I can tell, nobody has
used auto-tow OR winch launch at a public airport
in four years.

That comes as a surprise to me since I got my ground launch
endorsement at a public airport (Caddo Mills, TX - 7F3) with a
commercial operation - Southwest Soaring
(http://www.southwestsoaring.com).

This was just a year ago, and the web site indicates auto tows are
still done.

This was quite troubling to me. It seems public airports have
rejected ground launch entirely.

Actually, that hasn't been my impression at all. Hearne (KLHB) seems
quite happy to have autotows. These are hang-gliders and paragliders,
but I have a hard time believing they would object to gliders. I know
that when the club I belinged to stopped doing autotows at Hearne,
this was a club decision rather than an airport decision.

Hmmm...I was a bit surprised at how little the "public" airports
support soaring.

Actually, I've never noticed that at all.

When the FBO I instruct for began to have financial disagreements with
the city of Bryan (which owns Coulter Field - CFD), soaring was never
a bone of contention. Coulter continues to support a skydiving
operation as well, and several ultralights are housed there. The
operator was offered several new homes, including a local towered
field with airline traffic. He eventually settled on Navasota (60R),
a local municipal field where he got a better deal (I assume). I was
slow in moving my glider, but the new FBO at Coulter was only too
happy to have me there paying tiedown. I was told that if I wanted to
keep a towplane there and be based there, that was cool too. I
aerotowed out of there with the full cooperation of the new FBO - in
fact, the line guy offered to run my wing.

Bottom line, it has been my experience that, at least in Texas, most
public airports are happy to have any recognized aeronautical activity
that generates revenue, including soaring, and work to integrate the
activity into the normal flow of operations rather than forbidding it.

Sure, sure they turn a blind eye to
the occasional aero-retrieve, but if anything happened, the
"walked on the runway" illegality would absolve the airport of any
liability...

Why exactly should the airport have any liability in the first place,
and why do you object to them taking steps to limit it? This kind of
attitude might explain the problems you have with airport access in
California.

Michael