On Dec 20, 9:07*am, bildan wrote:
On Dec 19, 3:52*pm, " wrote:

We at the Fault Line Flyers Glider Club in Briggs Texas want to build
or buy a tension meter for our auto tow operation.

Does anyone have experience that might be helpful.

Bill Snead
6W

You can buy strain gauge based electronic tension systems with hand
held readout units either wired or wireless. *They are sometimes
called "crane scales" or "dynomometers". *Just Google "tension load
cell". *You'll want a 0-2000 Lbf unit.

There are also clevis attached USB tension load cells which plug into
your laptop which come with appropriate software. The USB units are
nice since they are powered by the USB bus - just plug and play.

There are others too. I've been looking for a similar inline load cell
and will probably purchase from http://www.futek.com/. I don't have
any relation to the company, but have been looking for a while and
their offerings appear to be pretty solid.
Craig