I've had a lot of fun Auto Towing at Sunflower in the last few years. Twice when I've had family visiting, we've taken them up in the 2-33 on Auto Tow, with Leah driving and me flying. Everyone gets involved in the operation, everyone has fun, and it's cheap.

We have a lot of room. We usually start the launch from wherever the glider stopped on landing, usually with around 6000 feet remaining. Usually we use a 2000 foot-ish long rope. Usually we get our 2-33 to around 1000 feet AGL without much extra effort. We could accelerate faster, we could pull harder, and we would have more rope breaks and more wear and tear on the car and the glider. There is a lot of extra wear and tear on everything involved, whether winch launching or auto towing, to get that last 10% of altitude.

When I was giving my grandparents rides and my little sister her first flying lessons on Labor Day, we had a great wind gradient and our best launch in the 2-33 was 1500 AGL. This is on the "nose" aerotow hook.

One of our club members has built a few pulleys but we haven't had a chance to test them out. I am kind of more interested in a 3:1 reduction with a moving and fixed pulley. This allows the towing car to also have a tow release in case the glider can't release. Also reduces the car speed, increases acceleration, and allows you to use less runway.

We've almost exclusively been auto towing the last few years with my 3.6L 2014 Subaru Outback with a homemade schweizer-like tow release in the receiver hitch.

I'd like to get a hitch mounted rope rewinder along with the tow release. Then I think that with a parachute on the glider end we could wind the rope in before the end hit the ground, greatly reducing our wear and tear and not hurting the turn around time much.

Sometimes when I'm dreaming I think that a mobile glider school with an auto tow rig and a two seater on a trailer could be fun. There are a lot of people out there who are interested in flying gliders but just don't live within a convenient distance to a club or commercial operation.

After reading about Casey Aviation's Auto Towing (http://flycasey.com/auto-towing-a-glider/) we got some of the flat pull tape that he was talking about. It is cheap, available in long lengths, and plenty strong enough. Unfortunately it just didn't last at all on our rough old runway and its almost impossible to splice. At least it wasn't an expensive experiment.