Safety of winch launch vrs. aero tow?

Gary Boggs wrote:
I really appreciate all this good input, thank you all for responding. Now
for a new twist, one of our members has built a "pay out winch".

Haven't heard about that, but I _have_ heard about a hairy thing called
"step towing", which is something the hang-glider pilots do from small
fields. They winch up to say 150m, have the winch pay out as the fly
back, turn and take another winch launch from altitude! This can of
course be repeated for as many times as practical, and some respectable
altitudes can be gained.

Imagine this done with a glider and dyneema or spectra cord for wire.
You would of course have to modify the tow-hook to not automatically
back-release (shudder, gulp!)...

Well, if someone actually tries this with a sailplane I'm not sure I'd
want to know. They would certainly not be allowed to fly _my_ glider
anyway.

Christian 8-)