On Sun, 15 Aug 2010 10:29:49 -0700 (PDT), sisu1a
wrote:


Modern winching is pretty much a science and has come a long way since
the 60s so it does not do the soaring community (US at least...) a
favor to combine it all into single raw statistics cause it paints a
negative biased picture based on irrelevant data.


Hmmm... I beg to differ.
Modern winching has very much in common with winching in the 60s.
The only difference is that the winches grew stronger in accordance to
the rising weight and speed of the gliders, but otherwise -at least in
Germany- very little has changed. Apart from the stronger engines the
rest of the equipment as well as the procedures are still the same as
fifty years ago.

It is not necessary (Bill - I know you are going to cry out now to
have the latest state-of-the-art gizmos (telemetry, plastic cables,
advanced speed control) to perform a perfectly safe and satisfactory
winch launch.

Cheers
Andreas