On Tuesday, October 23, 2012 11:48:33 AM UTC-4, wrote:
On Tuesday, October 23, 2012 9:33:28 AM UTC-4, wrote: Karl, please detail the winch. On Monday, October 22, 2012 11:16:55 PM UTC-4, Sean F (F2) wrote: https://vimeo.com/51897500 The winch was surplus from the Canadian Air Cadet program and was built by the military about 30 years ago. Originally equipped with steel wire, it now has 3/16th Spectra rope. The engine, a 330 HP, 350 cid Corvette powerplant, was installed about 10 years ago. Being built by the military it is "hell for stout" and shows no signs of fatique. Other than a new exhaust system and a paint job the winch was combat ready when we got it. Over the Labor Day weekend we were fortunate to have Uli Neuman and his son Philip travel to Eagle Field to get us started in safe and proper winch operation. Uli knows winches! He learned to fly off them in Germany and has used his engineering prowess to extensively rebuild the unit they use in Spartenburg, SC. He and John Good are currently developing an inline tension guage that will transmit force signals to the winch driver. We hope to use it for future winch launch training, ground launch sign offs and driver training at Mifflin County Airport.

Karl - thanks for the flowers! :-) One correction, though: The tension logging device is being developed and refined by Don Haselwood in FL. He put the system together and wrote the code for the logging software. I was only involved as far as the mechanics and packaging of the devices went and I am using the POD, as we dubbed it, with our winch in Spartanburg, SC. We have logged a number of launches by now and have recovered the data (line tension and GPS data) from them. We plan on publishing the findings and what we think we can learn from the data in the near future.
Uli
'Winchmeister'