Ian Johnston wrote:
On Sat, 2 Jul 2005 10:39:35 UTC, Bruce wrote:

: We have a better rule - no solo in glider before solo on winch...

It's not a bad idea, but it can and does (in my experience) lead to
clubs with large numbers of not-very-good winch drivers. I'd much
rather be launched by someone who has done dozens or hundreds of
launches than someone who does a few every few weeks to satisfy club
rules.

Ian, winch-but-not-any-other-sort-of-instructor
Ian

We average around 26-35 launches a day. With a small club and the instructors
doing less winching (although everyone including the CFI drives winch) this
means that our students, and solo pilots get to do plenty of winch driving.

Instructors can expect to spend some time on the winch - maybe 5 or 10 launches,
once every quarter. Although we have one who volunteers just about ever time he
is there - he just loves playing tunes with that V8...
The others will share the launching, on average doing around 8 launches on any
given day. It is not onerous, everyone shares the work and pitches in, and the
experience on the winch means the low time pilots have a better understanding of
what is going on. There are days when one of the more experienced types installs
him/herself in the winch and makes the day go smoothly, and the inexperienced
types get a benchmark to aim for. But if we did that every week we would soon
lose the "really good" winch drivers. Spending a few hours seeing how well you
can get the winch to perform, every now and then is one thing,(and can be very
rewarding) but we all go to the airfield to fly...

Our experience is that there are a few individuals who never make satisfactory
winch drivers. With few exceptions they also struggle with the flying part. You
learn a lot observing someone on the winch. And driving the winch in all the
different conditions accelerates learning, he may not be flying, but the winch
driver is intimately involved in every launch.

--
Bruce Greeff
Std Cirrus #57
I'm no-T at the address above.