On Friday, April 8, 2016 at 5:31:06 PM UTC-7, BobW wrote:
As to targeting pilots for winching, I imagine I'd pretty much write off just
about every "experienced glider pilot I know" as a target-winchee,
concentrating instead on the steady stream of newbies filtering into local
clubs; they pretty much lack preconceptions about it. IMO/observation most
people simply aren't mentally into "new experiences like that" once they've
ascended whatever learning curve(s) they're comfortable with. (Aerotow was
good enough for my old man & it's good enough for me!)

Newbies aren't yet invested enough in the sport to spend time and money on something they know nothing about. The vast majority of veterans (at least, in in our area) don't particularly care about lower cost launches or even having a steady (or any) stream of newbies. After 7 years of making presentations and talking up the subject, in one of the most populous soaring regions in the country, I was able to find only one other person really willing to invest the cost of a cheap used glider and spend a couple of years of weekends with building a winch (with more support, we would have been much happier to buy one of Roman's). And, once built, we had to spring for a full membership in one of the local clubs just to get hold of a CG hook equipped Grob to test with. We gave up, and someone else now has a cheap winch project elsewhere, maybe they can get some traction.

It's not surprising that the majority of new winches in the US are going to CAP units, they are faced with dwindling budgets and actually need an economical way to get newbies in the air.

Marc