"Marc Ramsey" wrote in message
...
Bill Daniels wrote:
"Dan G" wrote in message
...
On Jul 13, 2:33 pm, "Bill Daniels" bildan@comcast-dot-net wrote:
The skylaunch is a cosmetic update of the 1960's US Gerhlein winches and
suffers from the same major shortcomings. If you still like it, save
$50k -
$75k by spending a couple of thousand for an old Gerhlein and fix it up.

If you'd like a modern, state of the art winch, take a look at these
from US
winch buiders:

http://www.romansdesign.com/
andhttp://www.hydrowinch.com

Bill Daniels

Some serious crack smoking been going on there :-)

Skylaunches are quite superb winches. They're very well made and give
smooth, powerful, and repeatable launches. A pleasure to fly on and
drive.


Dam

It that's true, then so are all the 50 year old Gerhleins since they're
the same at the core except for the additional drum. You can find
Gerhleins everywhere in the US - usually rusting away in the weeds.

And, indeed, if you pull one out of the weeds, disassemble it, sandblast
and repaint the frame (assuming it hasn't rusted out), replace or rebuild
the engine, transmission, differential, drum, cable (synthetic rope is
much safer), seat, enclosure, wheels, tires, rollers, and guillotine (the
existing one will do a better job of cutting off someones arm than cutting
Spectra), then you have something roughly equivalent to a single drum
Skylaunch, but lacking the rather clever mechanical throttle control
system that makes them easier to drive.

Or, if you value your time at more than $5/hour, you can simply buy a
Skylaunch at some level of completion and finish it off with locally
sourced components. Of course, this is all assuming that what is
important to you is launching gliders to a reasonable height at a
reasonable cost, rather than exploring the limits of technology...

Marc


That's an exageration. Most of them are in better shape than that. The
engine will probably run with fluid changes and a new battery. Old
transmissions seem to last forever. They've been put back in operation for
a couple of thousand dollars and a few weekends work

That 'clever' Skylaunch spring loaded throttle stop can be made for about
$30 worth of parts from a hardware store.

The real question is, why spend serious money for 50 year old technology
that didn't work all that well in the first place.

Bill D