At Lasham we still allow gliders and glider tugs to land while winch
launches are taking place, but they are unlikely to do a go-around and are
situationally aware.

To enable this to happen we place the winch and aerotow launch points some
500 yards in from the downwind boundary (it's a fairly large airfield), so
there is plenty of room to land short. This also means that gliders can
land short and taxi up to somewhere near the launch point to minimise
retrieving and that tugs don't have to back taxi.

We have dedicated launch point controllers to control all launches. If it
looks at all likely that an aircraft is going to land long, then he will
hold the launch.

I accept that this would not be possible at small airfields.

Derek Copeland

At 09:25 17 July 2009, John Smith wrote:
Del C wrote:
I agree with Bill that a winch launch shouldn't hold up other
aircraft
departures for more than a couple of minutes, and that aircraft can
still
land as long as they can land well short of where the cable is; they
won't be able to safely do 'go-arounds' though.

No, no, no. Definitely no. Just a couple of weeks ago there has been a
fatality in Germany (or was it Austria?) exactly for this reason: A
pilot (experienced and local, for that matter) did a go around into the
winch cable. No chance.

There is absolutely no other traffic allowed as long as the winch cable
is in he air. Which also means: No winch launch as long as there is an
airplane in the final. No problem on a not so busy airfield, on a busy
place, there is some coordination and cooperation from all parties
required.