Winch Launching

Finding a long enough strip is exceedingly difficult in some parts of the
country.

At 23:59 04 January 2009, John Smith wrote:
This has been discussed here many times, and if you search the archieves

you'll find plenty of material. Anyway, a short summary:

Pro:
- it is safe *if* done properly. Be sure to get thorough instruction by
experienced people.
- cheaper than aerotow
- "greener" than aerotow
- it is fun!

Con:
- it mixes poorly with power traffic (but it is doable if you have a
plan and everybody cooperates)
- boring for the winch driver
- needs more ground staff
- limited in height and distance, i.e. you can't tow to that thermal 10

miles away if there's none nearby

On Jan 4, 9:00*pm, Nyal Williams wrote:
Finding a long enough strip is exceedingly difficult in some parts of the
country.

Spoken by one in a club that recently moved and purchased an airport.
But as I understand it your club apparently does have an option to
extend your length enough to adopt winching with some bartering.

A winch can be parked some distance from the end of the runway.
Overruns at municipal airports are usually at least 500ft. Runway
light of concern are usually easily removed for the day. Granted,
CCSC is rather short for 'performance' winching, and Red Stewart
airport (1.5miles distant), where the winch proponents did a
significant number of launches this past year is a bit longer, however
at that airfield there may be an opportunity to park the winch well
past the airfield boundary, an option that doesn't exist at the CCSC
site. Mixed operations are quite manageable, mostly it's
communications, communications, communications.

Thinking 'way outside the box', 16.1 miles distant is Wilmington Air
Park, owned by DHL, who is pulling out of the US market. Two runways,
(4250' separation), of 9000' and greater length but 150' wide. Opt
for the shorter one and share the airport with UPS or FEDEX or whoever
may want to serve Cincinnati from there. This may be a golden
opportunity, but it would take 5-day operations most of the season to
make it happen. Of course, Wilmington Air Park doesn't have the park-
like ambiance of CCSC's present site. To gain 1200 more feet at the
present site, CCSC would have to acquire land and close a road; two
big and expensive challenges. There appears to be some type of
easement or right of way to the south that might become a new road and
high tension lines to the far east beyond the houses that could
parallel new private lanes.

Winching is quite safe unless you simply must get everyone involved in
driving the winch. CCSC already has a team concept at work and
extending this to winching would seem trivial. The boring bit about
winch driving is waiting while some instructors and students are doing
ground school at the launch point. If the glider is ready when the
rope arrives, a single drum winch can keep up with a tow plane. A two-
drum winch will outrun any tow plane in terms of vertical feet per
day. Few, if any, tow ten miles to lift. Most club boards would put
high fees on twenty minute turn arounds in flat country. I think
that's more common in the mountain west where the tach hour charges
apply for long, high tows. Not clear from the web site about the
actual fees. There seems to be some discrepancies between the rate/
100ft on the web and the schedule and the hook up charge. This would
seem to need re-thinking for winching, that is, the ratio of hook-up
charge to launch charge.

Frank Whiteley