On Wed, 29 Oct 2003 16:48:38 +0100, "Bert Willing"
wrote:

Nothing worse than an additional communication step between pilot and winch
driver. Did that for 10 years in Germany, happy to do it by radio ever since
I left Germany, hadn't had an interference from others on the same
frequencies for the last 13 years :-)

Don't forget that you rarely do 100 launches per day at your current
airfield with "Vent arriere" messages each 3 minutes, interfering with
launches...

(Yes - I'm envious!)

Of course you are correct - it's nice to have a direct connection
between pilot and winch driver.
My club at Landau has never had such a (radio) communication, and we
seldom miss it. Sometimes the Ka-8 gets too fast (and releases early),
but otherwise I cannot remember and disadvantages of not having a
glider-winch connection.
It's more a question of winch driver practice - drivers with little
practice tend to judge the speed wrong and need corrections.

To add some spice - I personally watched two bad winch accidents, each
had to do with power failure of the winch/too low airspeed. In both
cases there was direct radio communication between glider and winch.






Bye
Andreas