Bill Daniels wrote:

But don't stop with the nuts and bolts, stand back and look at the big
picture the way a prospecitve new member looks at it. They ask, "What's it
going to cost me to fly gliders with this organization?" The cost of tows
is a big part of the answer. If the total cost is too high, they go another

The total cost is always the same, there's no free lunch. If your tows
are too cheap, then the membership fees must be higher, unless you have
some magic money print press in your basement. I strongly believe that
high membership fees are much more prohibitive for new members than tow
fees.

My club bills the true towing cost. On the other hand, we don't bill the
glider usage by time but by the membership fee, because glider ownership
costs the same whether the glider is flown or not.

A winch can be used to generate a substantial revenue stream while reducing
the individual members launch cost - a big win-win.

You don't have to convince me of the advantages of a winch, after all,
I'm a winch driver. And I just *love* those catapult take offs. But as I
said in another post, you can't go cross country from the winch at every
site. At ours, for example, we mostly can't, so we use the winch mainly
for training. As landing practice is a major part of the student
training, a winch does reduce training cost tremendously. As you only
need one launch for an 8 hour cross country flight, tow cost isn't such
a big problem for cross country flying.