soaring into the future

Another selling proposition for existing airports is the reduction in noise
when using winches. If you couple that with starting an after school
aviation program at the local High School, you've got a good political base,
an eager workforce, and you can expand your equipment utilization from
primarily weekends to every day.

Mike Schumann

"Bill Daniels" bildan@comcast-dot-net wrote in message
...

"toad" wrote in message
...
Sorry that I'm late to the discussion, but I think the issue about
winches in the US is primarily about land. I doubt that there are
very few public use airports in the US that would allow winch
operations. There are only a few that put up with aero tow glider
operations. So to start a winch operation in the US you would have
to own enough land and be able to get it designated an airport (hard
to do politically) to allow winch operation. In the northeastern US,
there is only one glider clubs that I know of that has the space to do
it, at Philadelphia.

The land for such an operation would cost several million dollars at
todays prices. Aero tow doesn't sound so expensive compared to paying
for that mortgage.

Todd Smith
3S

Todd, I think you overstate the situation.

I have asked three airport managers about winch launch and the response
was "bring it on". It seems almost universal that glider pilots assume
winch operations would be turned down so they don't actually ask. Ask in
a reasonable way and you may be surprised at the answer.

Managers of small airports that have traditionally served small, single
engine airplanes have seen the number of operations at their airports drop
dramatically as the price of 100LL avgas has soared. (Many predict 100LL
will become non-existant within the next three years.) That drop in
operations has them worried about their jobs which, to a degree, depends
on public demand for airport services.

Against this background, a proposal that would bring 100's of operations
per day, even if they are gliders, can look pretty good, particularly if
those operations don't generate noise complaints.

Work up an reasonable winch operations plan with lots of information about
other successful operations and present it. Can't hurt.

Bill Daniels
p.s. I you want help, e-mail me.




--
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The guys riding motocross and carbon fiber bikes do it because of speed and
thrill. A 10 minute boring aerotow is a turnoff. A 40 second 2G winch
launch is just what these guys are looking for.

Winch launching is about FUN. Saving money needs to be viewed as a
byproduct that lets you buy even better toys.

Mike Schumann

"kirk.stant" wrote in message
...
I think this discussion is going the wrong way. If you are going to
redefine soaring in the future, you don't start with the hardware -
you have to define what the sport of soaring is going to evolve
into.

As far as low cost gliders, guys, they already exist - been to a local
paraglider/hangglider field lately?

But as long (and I want to caveat this statement by emphasizing that
I'm talking about soaring in the US, not other countries) as we
attempt to push soaring as "a cheap way to fly" it will continue to
stagnate.

You see it at all but a few enlightened glider operations: Emphasis
on "how inexpensive" soaring is compared to power flying; training in
beat-up low performance antique gliders, availability of similar beat-
up low performance antique gliders for post-solo/ post license flying
- and the new glider pilot gets bored and wanders off to spend his
money on a pair of new quads, or a bass boat, etc. And you are left
with the old codgers who leaned to fly in primaries and think a 1-26
is the bees knees, or total glassholes who get serious on their own
and discover the dark side - that soaring is a SPORT, not just a way
to fly.

You want to grow soaring? Look at all those clowns riding their $3000
carbon fiber bicycles wearing gaudy spandex. Most will never actually
race, but they enjoy pretending, and socializing, and riding with
their friends in race-like conditions.

Or check out all the motocross bikes being ridden for fun - most never
actually race, but it's fun to pretend, and it's even more fun to play
with the same hardware the pro's use!

Yet at many glider clubs, just try to suggest that the club should
push XC, or racing, or that every student should be required to get
his Silver. The howls of "we don't want to race", "XC is dangerous",
"that's not what the club should be teaching", and "soaring isn't
about XC and racing" get deafening.

Interestingly, this attitude often from some old codger, as he gets
into his pristine ASW-20 for a 3 hour local flight, while the newly
minted glider pilot struggles through his mandated 1-hour flight in
the club single seater (glass, if he's lucky), knowing that if he
DARES to landout, there will be hell to pay (since there isn't a
trailer for the glider, and nobody knows how to derig it anyway...).

So - While new developments in gliders are always welcome (and we
desperately need to replace all those horrible 2-33s and 1-26s in club
fleets), we also have to define our sport, and get that image out
where the people with the time and money to soar are waiting to be
discovered

A final thought - when was the last time there was a cover story about
soaring in Sports Illustrated? Or any story? SSA, what's your
excuse?

Kirk
66

PS: Winch launching is the future. 2000' with no noise, fun even
when there isn't any lift, green (get those Prius buyers
interested...). Combine with sexy glass ships, and people will stop
by to watch the show....



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Ian wrote: I can't see the point in jets, really... Small jet
sustainers might be fun, though.

Fun is the key word. Since we are wishing into the future, my thought
is that the small jet engine should be more reliable due to fewer
moving parts (likely just one). The weight should be less, the size
smaller, and operation should be smooth with little to no vibration.
Extension and retraction is quicker. Their drag profile is much
smaller; thus creating less of a problem if it extends but fails to
start. For repairs, it can be removed easily and put into a shoe box
to be mailed. All of these characteristics make for a great jet
sustainer, and hopefully an even better self-launcher.

I'm not an engineer, just a dreamer. But designers should be able to
come up with something small, powerful, reliable, simple, and of
course, inexpensive (sort of).

Raul Boerner

Ian wrote:
On 26 Dec, 20:26, Marc Ramsey wrote:

How can anyone be assured of a 1000+ production run in a shrinking
market that has never seen 1000+ unit production of any design?

Over 2,500 Blaniks, 1,400 Ka-6's (all variants) and 1,100 Ka-8's were
built. I can't offhand think of (or find) any other 1,000+ runs, but
there have been some pretty big productions. There were at least 800
Grunau Babies, 776 Pirats, 700 Schweizer 1-26's, 700 ASK13's, 620
Bocians and 600 Standard Libelles.

OK, I was wrong (such a rare thing 8^). Given the current worldwide
soaring market, however, I can't see how anyone could count on producing
1000+ units of any design, unless it offers wicked high performance for
a ridiculously low price.

The
glider manufacturers are smart, but I think they are in a death spiral
of building ever more sophisticated designs for a shrinking population
that can afford them.

And just to make matters worse, the long lifespans of plastic gliders
mean that second-hand performance is comparatively cheap. Glider
pilots generally - I think - prefer performance to newness, so a
£15,000 mass-produced glider would be up against hordes of second hand
Libelles, ASW-19's, Pegases, Astirs, Jantars and so on. That, I think,
is what killed the PW-5. About the only country where it did well was
New Zealand where - as I understand it - there was a large fleet of
elderly Ka-6's and the like and little by way of more modern
fibreglass trickling down through the market.

You need a fairly robust market (lots of people moving up to the latest
and greatest) for these hordes to materialize. When people buy fewer
new gliders (as seems to be the case in the US now), they keep their
older ones...

Marc

On Dec 28, 10:39 pm, "Mike Schumann" mike-nos...@traditions-
nospam.com wrote:
The problem with winch launching in the US is the inherent fear of change in
the average person. Most pilots in the US have never experienced a winch
launch, so they only look at the downsides. The potential launch cost
savings aren't significant enough to interest the guys who already own
private ships and have decent incomes. The same guys don't realize how much
fun winching can be, as they've never tried it.

In order to be a safe and successful with winch launching, you need to make
a 100% commitment. You can't run winches and tows in parallel, if people
are going to get and stay proficient in winch launching. In addition, the
only way winches are economically justifiable is if you totally eliminate
the overhead, operating, and maintenance costs associated with a tow plane..

The other problem in the US, is that most glider operations take place at
public airports. The coexistence of winches with power traffic can lead to
real, as well as imaginary issues. With the cost of farmland going thru the
roof, thanks to ethanol and urban sprawl, the feasibility of buying or
leasing land for a winch only strip reasonably close to major metropolitan
areas, where the pilots live, is quite problematic.

To overcome this hurdle, it's going to take a very imaginative marketing
effort, the most important element of which has to be touring the country
giving winch demos to clubs, so people start looking at how much FUN winch
launches are, instead of focusing on the cost savings.

Mike Schumann

P.S. I'm firmly convinced that the most promising market for winch
launching is with commercial operators, who are heavily focused on selling
rides. Not only would their margins increase dramatically, but so would the
ride experience and the marketability of their product.

"Dan G" wrote in message

...
On Dec 27, 8:18 pm, Marc Ramsey wrote:

big snip

I wish it was as easy as you think...

What's interesting to me is that you seem to be looking at the same
prices we are. A PW6U is £45,000 over here; a factory built Skylaunch
is ~£60,000. The former has seen a couple of sales and the latter are
being snapped up all over the place. How can we can afford to buy kit
like this and you guys can't? Most of the clubs I know have bought
this equipment cash.

A club which has bought a Skylaunch recently might have about 100
members paying £300 a year each and about £7 a winch launch, plus
around £25 an hour glider hire. An aerotow, btw, costs about £25 to
2,000'. What are US club membership numbers and costs like?

Dan

--
Posted via a free Usenet account fromhttp://www.teranews.com

One big problem with winch launching in the US is finding somewhere to
get trained. I have been looking for a place to get the training and
have found no place close enough to get the training and 2 locations
which I could travel to and get a concentrated training. Anybody
want to add any operations to that list ?

Todd Smith
3S

toad wrote:
One big problem with winch launching in the US is finding somewhere to
get trained. I have been looking for a place to get the training and
have found no place close enough to get the training and 2 locations
which I could travel to and get a concentrated training. Anybody
want to add any operations to that list ?

Where are you located?

Why not? Many European clubs offer both winch and aerotow
launches, including my own. Some members only ever
aerotow and some (usually the less well off) only winch
launch. Most members do both, depending on the conditions,
what they can afford, and what they want to do. A winch
launch costs less than a third of the cost of an aerotow,
so it is a cheap way of staying current during the
winter when it is rarely thermic in the UK. About
two-thirds of our launches are on the winch, so we
can make do with fewer tug aircraft than would be the
case if we were an all aerotow operation.

The only safety issue is to make sure that aerotows
and winch launches don't happen at the same time, to
eliminate the risk of the tug flying into the winch
cable. We have a 'launch point controller' to make
sure that this is the case.

Del Copeland

At 03:42 29 December 2007, Mike Schumann wrote:

snip
In order to be a safe and successful with winch launching,
you need to make
a 100% commitment. You can't run winches and tows
in parallel, if people
are going to get and stay proficient in winch launching.
In addition, the
only way winches are economically justifiable is if
you totally eliminate
the overhead, operating, and maintenance costs associated
with a tow plane.

Winch launching can be much more dangerous than aerotow if you don't have
the proper training and stay current. If you have a club with both winch
launching and aerotow, and members focus on one or the other, you're fine.
The problem is with a typical pilot who only flies one or two times a week
and occasionally plays around with winches.

Many US clubs are relatively small compared to some European operations. On
a busy day, we have maybe 20 people show up. On a typical day, we don't
even have enough interest to get all 5 of our club gliders onto the flight
line. There's no way, in that environment that you are going to have enough
manpower and interest to haul out the winch and the tow plane. The
inevitable result is that the winch will only come out for special
occasions, and someone is going to get hurt.

And that doesn't even go into the economic issues, where the big
attractiveness of the winch is to completely eliminate the costs associated
with owning and operating a tow plane.

Mike Schumann

"Del C" wrote in message
...
Why not? Many European clubs offer both winch and aerotow
launches, including my own. Some members only ever
aerotow and some (usually the less well off) only winch
launch. Most members do both, depending on the conditions,
what they can afford, and what they want to do. A winch
launch costs less than a third of the cost of an aerotow,
so it is a cheap way of staying current during the
winter when it is rarely thermic in the UK. About
two-thirds of our launches are on the winch, so we
can make do with fewer tug aircraft than would be the
case if we were an all aerotow operation.

The only safety issue is to make sure that aerotows
and winch launches don't happen at the same time, to
eliminate the risk of the tug flying into the winch
cable. We have a 'launch point controller' to make
sure that this is the case.

Del Copeland

At 03:42 29 December 2007, Mike Schumann wrote:

snip
In order to be a safe and successful with winch launching,
you need to make
a 100% commitment. You can't run winches and tows
in parallel, if people
are going to get and stay proficient in winch launching.
In addition, the
only way winches are economically justifiable is if
you totally eliminate
the overhead, operating, and maintenance costs associated
with a tow plane.








--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

kirk.stant wrote:
My definition of "geezer" is "pilot who has more hours on fire than I
have on actual instruments." An honorable title.

YEAH BABY!

I love it. We have a few "geezer" pilots at our club who have been
there - done that - and are my role models.

Exactly! That's why I objected to the disparaging use of "geezer" in
this thread as a substitute for "old guy that doesn't get it".

--
Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA
* Change "netto" to "net" to email me directly
* "Transponders in Sailplanes" http://tinyurl.com/y739x4
* "A Guide to Self-launching Sailplane Operation" at www.motorglider.org

I agree that you need a certain critical membership
mass to support both launching methods. However if
you can make gliding cheaper by the use of a winch
AND advertise the fact, especially on university and
college campuses, then maybe the clubs in the US will
get bigger. Many of our top UK competition glider pilots
started as members of university gliding clubs. They
are the ones who are more likely to have the disposable
income later on in life to be able to afford gliding,
if they are not priced out of it in the first place!


The other big source of new members in the UK are successful
middle aged empty nesters who are looking for something
to keep them occupied. From a club point of view they
are even better as, being older, they generally need
more flights to get up to solo standard, and often
go on to become committee members, bringing in valuable
business experience from the outside World.

Both groups have the time to help at the launch point.

I also agree that pilots need to be properly trained
in winch launching techiques, but you are making it
sound something akin to playing Russian Roulette! As
long as you approach winch launching with proper respect,
your brain in gear, and remember to do the 'eventualities'
check (what will I do if the wing drops, the cable
or weak link breaks, or the winch engine fails) there
is absolutely no reason to consider it dangerous. BTW
some poor fellow recently managed to cartwheel a glider
during an aerotow launch! So even they are not without
some risks.

We are lucky to see many of our members twice a month,
let alone twice a week, except on very soarable days!
We do have currency requirements, which vary from at
least once flight every three weeks for early solo
pilots up to eight weeks for very experienced pilots.
After that you will need check flights.

Del Copeland

At 06:12 29 December 2007, Mike Schumann wrote:
Winch launching can be much more dangerous than aerotow
if you don't have
the proper training and stay current. If you have
a club with both winch
launching and aerotow, and members focus on one or
the other, you're fine.
The problem is with a typical pilot who only flies
one or two times a week
and occasionally plays around with winches.

Many US clubs are relatively small compared to some
European operations. On
a busy day, we have maybe 20 people show up. On a
typical day, we don't
even have enough interest to get all 5 of our club
gliders onto the flight
line. There's no way, in that environment that you
are going to have enough
manpower and interest to haul out the winch and the
tow plane. The
inevitable result is that the winch will only come
out for special
occasions, and someone is going to get hurt.

And that doesn't even go into the economic issues,
where the big
attractiveness of the winch is to completely eliminate
the costs associated
with owning and operating a tow plane.

Mike Schumann

'Del C' wrote in message
...
Why not? Many European clubs offer both winch and
aerotow
launches, including my own. Some members only ever
aerotow and some (usually the less well off) only
winch
launch. Most members do both, depending on the conditions,
what they can afford, and what they want to do. A
winch
launch costs less than a third of the cost of an aerotow,
so it is a cheap way of staying current during the
winter when it is rarely thermic in the UK. About
two-thirds of our launches are on the winch, so we
can make do with fewer tug aircraft than would be
the
case if we were an all aerotow operation.

The only safety issue is to make sure that aerotows
and winch launches don't happen at the same time,
to
eliminate the risk of the tug flying into the winch
cable. We have a 'launch point controller' to make
sure that this is the case.

Del Copeland

At 03:42 29 December 2007, Mike Schumann wrote:

snip
In order to be a safe and successful with winch launching,
you need to make
a 100% commitment. You can't run winches and tows
in parallel, if people
are going to get and stay proficient in winch launching.
In addition, the
only way winches are economically justifiable is if
you totally eliminate
the overhead, operating, and maintenance costs associated
with a tow plane.








--
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