Safety of winch launch vrs. aero tow?

Frank Whiteley wrote[snip]
There once was a non-BGA soaring site/club in East Anglia in the UK. The
operator was named Fred, but the surname escapes me and I believe he
passed
away in the 1980's. By all accounts he operated a steam winch [snip]

Freddie Wiseman was the man, and the winch was not steam powered, but
diesel. It was remarkable in that it was a converted combine harvester.
I have a photo of it somewhere. I saw it working. It was rather low
powered, and operated via huge canvas belt drives which were
"interesting". Not technology I would suggest repeating elsewhere.

The site was Ridgewell (ex 381st BG base 1943-45), where I now fly
from - see http://www.essexgliding.org/index.htm

The winch was fairly lethal, potentially - I knew one of the drivers who
had to contend with a broken cable still under power thrashing around in
the cab. After Freddie's death in 1984 a few people revived the club
and continued to use the combine winch until 1988. When my club bought
the site the winch was still intact and was brought back, but we decided
not to use it and instead bought other winches. The only time I know of
using it in our time was as a towing vehicle, when we moved two huts and
the tractors got bogged down (don't ask - it's a long story). It did
the rescue but burnt out its clutch in the process. It was eventually
scrapped about three years ago.

Relevance to the subject line - it was dangerous to the operator, but
never hurt a pilot - instead gave lots of practice, as is only right, in
"premature terminations of launch" and "too low in circuit".

Chris N.