In his book Towing Aloft, Dennis Pagan mentions the four primary types of towing: pay-out winch towing, pay-in winch towing, air towing, and hand towing. In the United States, the most popular type of towing seems to be pay-out towing. Such towing is done on two primary types of winches – friction-based winches and hydraulic winches. Friction-based winches use the friction of a mechanical brake to provide line tension during tows. These machines are quite simple. But they are crude, the tension regulation is very imprecise, and the tension is almost never constant, resulting in pretty rough tows. Also, the brake pads or brake belts used in these devices require frequent maintenance and replacement. Hydraulic winches provide for smooth tows, but they are complex, hard to mount, hard to handle, and require lots of supervision and maintenance.
In Europe, where large spaces or long roads for towing are seldom available, pay-in towing appears to be more popular. Air towing of paragliders is still experimental.
Hand towing has been around for quite some time and has been quite popular in South Florida (giving rise to the famous sport of “condo-soaring“) as well as in parts of Europe, where you can find paragliding schools employing hand towing as a formal instruction technique. An example can be seen here.
Overall, towing is arguably superior to mountain launch because you can “sink out” and be back up in your next thermal just minutes later, without another long ride up the mountain, and with your car already at the LZ.
Our eWinch makes towing much more accessible and affordable than before. It’s light, compact, can be set up at hard-to-reach places, such as a beach for example, and allows for self-towing.
More: read an article on safety in flight.