On Wed, 06 Jun 2018 20:13:45 -0700, Papa3 wrote:

So, do many European clubs have a formal process to do something like
this? Use aerotow to get some air-time early on to develop the basic
stick and rudder skills followed by winch to enable multiple patterns
(circuits) cost-effectively.

My club, Cambridge, does almost all training on the winch. I think the
only aero-tows I had pre-solo were for spinning exercises, and that was
and is still pretty much the norm. I didn't get an aero tow solo sign-off
until I'd been solo for a year, and I only worked for that because I knew
I'd be flying on your side of the pond that October - 2001: I was at Lost
Hills, CA for the World Free Flight Champs and Sacramento for the Sierra
Cup and got to fly gliders at Boulder, Avenal, Williams and Minden, so a
good trip from all points of view.

Back then we used a flying list rather than the current booked two-seat
flying system, so there tended to be more people at the launch point. As
a result, if a group of us worked at it we could hit 18 launches an hour
on a two-drum winch but that did require one person dedicated to driving
the cable retrieve truck and another two ground handling helpers - thats
in addition to the usual launch marshal and log keeper - and needs all
student-instructor briefing to be completed before they're at the head of
the two parallel launch queues we normally use. Fun to do!

Now, with booked flying, the reduced waiting time at the launch point
means the experience is better for those learning to fly, but the reduced
number of people at the launch point limits the launch rate to 10 an hour
or less.

Just curious,

Hope that's useful input.


--
Martin | martin at
Gregorie | gregorie dot org