The Utah Soaring Association built a pretty amazing winch that was designed to handle up to 9000' of winch rope! Yes, we spent a lot of energy on designing the drum to withstand the crazy crushing forces. We have only tried up to 7000' of rope so far but we were getting some pretty great high launches. Here is a fun video showing what it is like getting high on a winch launch at Nephi:

https://youtu.be/VrUTjWEfbcI

Cheers!
Bruno - B4