Auto-Towing - why is this not more popular?

kirk.stant wrote 2015/10/10 at 01:54:

Well, if your glider field is only 2400' long, with a highway at one
end and a road at the other, you pretty much have to aero tow. We
would love to have a winch at SLSA, but our field is just too short,
and we have 2 nice Pawnees and a nice 180 Supercub, and our tows are
cheap - so THAT is why we don't use a winch (trust me, we have
looked at it and done the math...).

But for clubs that have access to a nice long airport, I agree that
a modern winch is definitely the way to go!

if it's this location:

,1389m/data=!3m1!1e3

= then you could - if according to local laws / rules, which I don't
know - perhaps place the "launching runway" (I don't know the correct
term in english) a bit more in the east, where your grass strip is
longer, so you could start respectively winch from a point more in
south. The distance between plane and winch would grow to about 2,900
ft., if Google does measure it correct. That's not worse than at our place:

,1102m/data=!3m1!1e3

About 2,600 ft. distance between winch and starting point, and the
options of emergency land-outs are not really better than yours, if
I estimate this right from the google map's view.

We almost only use a winch to launch our gliders ... winch has 2 drums,
7 mm steel cable, a 330 hp Turbo Diesel engine with torque converter and
fixed transmission. Max. release height is up to 1,500 ft. (wood: K8,
K6) or about 1,100-1,200 ft. (glass ships), depending on wind speed,
winch driver's and pilot's skill :-)

Given a good day, XC distances flown from our field are up to 1,000 km -
given a bad day, just training pattern.

regards
Werner