At 00:10 24 July 2009, bildan wrote:
On Jul 21, 4:12=A0pm, tommytoyz wrote:
Perhaps the way to go is just buy a good used winch from a European
club. What was the offered price again for that old Tost winch at
Lasham?

My German contacts recommend against buying an old Tost winch since
the parts they are made from are no longer available. In many ways
they share the same technology as the old Gerhleins.

Tost winches are good solid bits of German engineering and, from what I
can gather, far superior to a Gerhlein. The Lasham ones did over 7,500
launches each per year from 1985 to 2008, and one of them is still going
strong at the Mendips Gliding Club, who are apparently delighted with it.
Lasham has retained the other one for the time being.

The only downsides are that they are purely manually driven and a bit
fiddly to operate, and that some spares are getting difficult to obtain.
They can be fitted with the Skylaunch throttle kits which overcomes the
first problem.

Derek Copeland