Context :

Aims : The vertical halo scale height is a crucial parameter to understand the transport of cosmic-ray electrons ( CRE ) and their energy loss mechanisms in spiral galaxies .
Until now , the radio scale height could only be determined for a few edge-on galaxies because of missing sensitivity at high resolution .

Methods : We developed a sophisticated method for the scale height determination of edge-on galaxies .
With this we determined the scale heights and radial scale lengths for a sample of 13 galaxies from the CHANG-ES radio continuum survey in two frequency bands .

Results : The sample average value for the radio scale heights of the halo are 1.1 \pm 0.3 kpc in C-band and 1.4 \pm 0.7 kpc in L-band .
From the frequency dependence analysis of the halo scale heights we found that the wind velocities ( estimated using the adiabatic loss time ) are above the escape velocity .
We found that the halo scale heights increase linearly with the radio diameters .
In order to exclude the diameter dependence , we defined a normalized scale height \tilde { h } which is quite similar for all sample galaxies at both frequency bands and does not depend on the star formation rate or the magnetic field strength .
However , \tilde { h } shows a tight anticorrelation with the mass surface density .

Conclusions : The sample galaxies with smaller scale lengths are more spherical in the radio emission , while those with larger scale lengths are flatter .
The radio scale height depends mainly on the radio diameter of the galaxy .
The sample galaxies are consistent with an escape-dominated radio halo with convective cosmic ray propagation , indicating that galactic winds are a widespread phenomenon in spiral galaxies .
While a higher star formation rate or star formation surface density does not lead to a higher wind velocity , we found for the first time observational evidence of a gravitational deceleration of CRE outflow , e.g .
a lowering of the wind velocity from the galactic disk .