Ian Johnston wrote:
On Sun, 3 Jul 2005 18:32:35 UTC, Bruce wrote:

: 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.

I reckon it takes at least ten launches, particularly on a windy day,
for a driver to get his/her hand in, and a further ten for them to be
polished. So if you use a couple of drivers a day (am/pm split, maybe)
I'm sure standards will be quite acceptable.

It's places - and I have been there - where driving the winch is seen
as an unpopular chore, so people reluctantly do two or three and then
hand over, where standards really start to slip.

I agree completely about the worth of student pilots learning to
winch, but that has to be balanced against the safety of the launching
operation generally. Incidentally, I wish more (flying) instructors
would drive winches. Many of them have some very peculiar ideas about
what the winch, and the winch driver, can and cannot do!

Ian

That is precisely why we keep everyone driving the winch - that way the person
on either end of the string knows what the other has to contend with.

For what it is worth we very seldom have a potentially dangerous situation (one
resulting in a incident report) By making the winch driving part of the
activities for everyone we remove the grudge factor - it is really hard to bitch
about the "chore" when the instructors do it too.

From a safety perspective I think this is one of the best things we do. It is
amazing the strange behaviour one occasionally comes across down there.
Whereupon a short discussion of the potential problem usually breaks the chain.

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