Good Morning!

I Think Gary had a similar question or topic here, a year ago or
longer.
Seems to me, he likes winches, but his club has doubts.

I was trained with winch launches to solo in Germany, after I had
already learnt to fly airplanes in the US. Subsequently I got into
soaring in CO with aerotow, the going thing. Visiting Germany through
the years, I realize how much more experience there is about that
method. There are many places, where there is winch launch only! There
are pilots with two years experience of flying who have never seen an
aero tow!

One canot make any comparison or have statistics! It all depends who
does it, and his knowledge. When I look at modern winches and
everything that goes with it, winch launching is really quite
complicated and specialized.

Take a good Towplane, a good instructor, a talented pilot, and in no
time one has a towing operation going. In the US, to start a winch
operation, which is as perfect as Oerlinghausen or similar would take
a lot. To my knowledge, there is not a decent winch in the US, by
comparison to Germany and what they have.

Bill Daniels knows his stuff, but I think he is the exeption in the
US.

As for Gary Boggs, the only thing I can suggest is to go to Germany
for a summer and learn the trade. Winches, how to run them, including
the infrastructure. (Telephone)

On the other hand, with more reasonable selflaunchers coming out, the
winch effort may not be the answer anymore in the US. There are enough
reasons mentioned in this thread.

Happy Halloween