"Chris Nicholas" wrote in message
...
Alistair, Hi! I certainly remember you. Didn't know where you went
after North Weald.

I have seen a recent posting which suggested that using the diff as the
drive for a winch drum on the axle and doubling the speed is not a
recipe for long life

Quite true as we found out. We had a source of free lorry back axles at the
time and we went through a fair number till we altered the lubricating
system to thinner oil with a pump and cooler. I left SGC about that time so
have no data on the subsequent fate of that winch. Considering it replaced
our original S/H ex Derby and Lancs one (Ford V8) which was on its last legs
when we bought it , it did pretty well.

My next club was the Coventry GC at Husbands Bosworth where very little
winching took place -- I only had about 4 in as many years - it was all
aero-towing at HB.

I did not see your winchosaurus,

You were lucky then! It wasn't a pretty sight I can tell you. I have a
model of it somewhere.

When we lost the use of wire launching at North Weald but had bought
Ridgewell and needed to acquire one or more winches, we tried a
converted bus.

I used to think NW's auto towing was magic. On a good day you could get
twenty launches an hour. Didn't half use up Ford Zephyrs though!!

Now, we have ended up with 4 ex-ATC winches bought at auction, getting
two reasonable ones from them plus a lot of spares, and replacing their
powertrains. One had a total cab transplant too, professionally built;
the other is in the course of having a lower cost replacement cab, made
by some of our members.

Good idea. The ATC jobs were very well built and designed to launch T21s.
A winch that could hoist one of those to 1000ft would launch anything.

Best wishes

Alistair

All the best to any others in the EGC who remember me.