At 23:53 18 March 2009, bildan wrote:
On Mar 18, 12:30=A0pm, Derek Copeland wrote:

2) Obviously you have never watched a dangerously steep, overpowered,
over-rotation on a winch launch. I have!

No, I haven't seen any of the weird things you describe. They all
seem to happen in your immediate vicinity. I wonder why.

Probably because I'm a gliding instructor at a large and very busy club
that does a lot of winch launching. I also visit other clubs that winch
launch.

I should add that probably 99% of winch launches go to plan (including
deliberate practice launch failures by instructors) without any
difficulties. About 1% suffer cable or weak link breaks, or other
technical failures of one sort or another. Given proper training these
should be just an inconvenience, rather than an emergency situation.

Once it was recognised that over powered winch launches were a problem for
lighter gliders, we reduced the power settings used for these types and
opened the winch engine throttles a bit more slowly. I haven't seen a
'rocket launch' for quite a few years now.

Derek Copeland