Pay-out winch video

I thought I'd post this with a new subject line so no one missed it.

We put a video of our pay-out winch on our web site:

http://www.nwskysports.com/

The reason we are using a pay out winch instead of a regular winch is that
at our airport, there are taxi ways on both sides of the main runway, and no
large grass area that we could use that wouldn't involve having the winch
line laying across places that other planes would have to taxi across. The
airport managers and I agreed that this would make it very difficult and
dangerous to use a normal long line winch here. A couple of members of the
Willamette Valley Soaring Club had already built this pay out winch to near
completion so I approached the airport managers here in Hood River with the
idea of using this type of winch instead. They agreed that this would be
much safer and an acceptable launch method.

I bought the winch from my buddies and have made several refinements to work
out some bugs and now it's working very well. The pay out winch has a spool
of rope with a disc brake on it, set to let line out when the glider pulls
harder than the drag is set. In some ways this is safer than a normal winch
because it makes it almost impossible to break the line if the drag is set
correctly. If the glider balloons up, the line just pays out faster,
instead of breaking, while still maintaining the pull on the line.

I don't think we are able to get quite as high as we would be able to with a
regular winch but with 3000ft of runway and no wind, we get 800 to 1000
feet and with a 20mph wind, we have gotten as high as 1300ft so far in our
2-33 with a cg hook. We are still working on just what is the optimal speed
for the tow vehicle and drag setting and I'm hoping we will be able to get
as high as 1500ft.

Gary Boggs, CFIG
3650 Airport Drive
Hood River, OR
97031-9613
541.490.5557
503.708.8869



"Gary Boggs" wrote in message
...
I thought I'd post this with a new subject line so no one missed it.

We put a video of our pay-out winch on our web site:

http://www.nwskysports.com/

I forgot to add that there is a modified starter motor on the spool and
after the glider releases, the operator reels in the line and the parachute
falls down very near the tow vehicle. During the initial trials we were
using some poly rope and had some trouble with the line cutting into the
wrapped line on the real and had a few line breaks. We increased the drum
diameter and went to synthetic line and have had no more line breaks since.


"Gary Boggs" wrote in message
...
The reason we are using a pay out winch instead of a regular winch is that
at our airport, there are taxi ways on both sides of the main runway, and
no
large grass area that we could use that wouldn't involve having the winch
line laying across places that other planes would have to taxi across.
The
airport managers and I agreed that this would make it very difficult and
dangerous to use a normal long line winch here. A couple of members of
the
Willamette Valley Soaring Club had already built this pay out winch to
near
completion so I approached the airport managers here in Hood River with
the
idea of using this type of winch instead. They agreed that this would be
much safer and an acceptable launch method.

I bought the winch from my buddies and have made several refinements to
work
out some bugs and now it's working very well. The pay out winch has a
spool
of rope with a disc brake on it, set to let line out when the glider pulls
harder than the drag is set. In some ways this is safer than a normal
winch
because it makes it almost impossible to break the line if the drag is set
correctly. If the glider balloons up, the line just pays out faster,
instead of breaking, while still maintaining the pull on the line.

I don't think we are able to get quite as high as we would be able to with
a
regular winch but with 3000ft of runway and no wind, we get 800 to 1000
feet and with a 20mph wind, we have gotten as high as 1300ft so far in our
2-33 with a cg hook. We are still working on just what is the optimal
speed
for the tow vehicle and drag setting and I'm hoping we will be able to get
as high as 1500ft.

Gary Boggs, CFIG
3650 Airport Drive
Hood River, OR
97031-9613
541.490.5557
503.708.8869



"Gary Boggs" wrote in message
...
I thought I'd post this with a new subject line so no one missed it.

We put a video of our pay-out winch on our web site:

http://www.nwskysports.com/

Hi Gary,

Interesting, my brain was working on a system very similar with the
starter motor retrieve.
What's your gear ratios and drum diameter?
How long to pay-back on 1000ft of line?
I didn't see a chute on the line, but you're driver stopped pretty close
the the wider cross-road on the end of the run.

My drag mechanism was a hydraulic motor with a pressure regulator on
the output side. Torque limiting pay-out tension would be very easy
to control and calibrate.

Any idea what tension you're generating to trigger the pay-out?

The whole thing was going to be a bolt-on using a 2" receiver socket
on the back of any tow vehicle.

Please, some pictures?

Chris

Gary Boggs wrote:

I forgot to add that there is a modified starter motor on the spool and
after the glider releases, the operator reels in the line and the parachute
falls down very near the tow vehicle. During the initial trials we were
using some poly rope and had some trouble with the line cutting into the
wrapped line on the real and had a few line breaks. We increased the drum
diameter and went to synthetic line and have had no more line breaks since.


"Gary Boggs" wrote in message
...

The reason we are using a pay out winch instead of a regular winch is that
at our airport, there are taxi ways on both sides of the main runway, and

no

large grass area that we could use that wouldn't involve having the winch
line laying across places that other planes would have to taxi across.

The

airport managers and I agreed that this would make it very difficult and
dangerous to use a normal long line winch here. A couple of members of

the

Willamette Valley Soaring Club had already built this pay out winch to

near

completion so I approached the airport managers here in Hood River with

the

idea of using this type of winch instead. They agreed that this would be
much safer and an acceptable launch method.

I bought the winch from my buddies and have made several refinements to

work

out some bugs and now it's working very well. The pay out winch has a

spool

of rope with a disc brake on it, set to let line out when the glider pulls
harder than the drag is set. In some ways this is safer than a normal

winch

because it makes it almost impossible to break the line if the drag is set
correctly. If the glider balloons up, the line just pays out faster,
instead of breaking, while still maintaining the pull on the line.

I don't think we are able to get quite as high as we would be able to with

a

regular winch but with 3000ft of runway and no wind, we get 800 to 1000
feet and with a 20mph wind, we have gotten as high as 1300ft so far in our
2-33 with a cg hook. We are still working on just what is the optimal

speed

for the tow vehicle and drag setting and I'm hoping we will be able to get
as high as 1500ft.

Gary Boggs, CFIG
3650 Airport Drive
Hood River, OR
97031-9613
541.490.5557
503.708.8869



"Gary Boggs" wrote in message
...

I thought I'd post this with a new subject line so no one missed it.

We put a video of our pay-out winch on our web site:

http://www.nwskysports.com/

The starter motor pulley is variable and we have it set at about 1.5inches,
the pulley on the drum is 14inches. We reel in 1000ft of line in about 30
seconds? We do use a chute on the line. We have to choke it down when the
wind is high because when it opens up very big, there is too much drag for
our starter motor and it bogs down.

The drum diameter is 21inches. We found that if it was smaller, the tension
on the line and the leverage of a smaller drum caused the line to cut into
itself when you were paying out.

My guess as to the force on line is probably something like 300lbs? I think
the next mod we will incorporate will be a tensiometer on the line. Right
now we use a pressure gauge on the brake line and as the disc brake heats
up, the pressure required to get the correct tension on the line goes up.
It would work much better if our winch operator was able to monitor the
actual tension on the line, instead of the pressure on the brake. If we
could find an electronic tensiometer, we could program it to operate the
brake, but this would make the winch even more complicated and expensive.
I've searched the web for available tensiometers, but found nothing
suitable,
so I think we will just build one into our system.

I will get some current pictures of our winch up on the web site soon. Let
me know if anyone has any more questions.

http://www.nwskysports.com/
Gary Boggs, CFIG
3650 Airport Drive
Hood River, OR
97031-9613
541.490.5557
503.708.8869





"Chris Ashburn" wrote in message
news:qZM6d.1603$mS1.1464@fed1read05...

Hi Gary,

Interesting, my brain was working on a system very similar with the
starter motor retrieve.
What's your gear ratios and drum diameter?
How long to pay-back on 1000ft of line?
I didn't see a chute on the line, but you're driver stopped pretty close
the wider cross-road on the end of the run.

My drag mechanism was a hydraulic motor with a pressure regulator on
the output side. Torque limiting pay-out tension would be very easy
to control and calibrate.

Any idea what tension you're generating to trigger the pay-out?

The whole thing was going to be a bolt-on using a 2" receiver socket
on the back of any tow vehicle.

Please, some pictures?

Chris

Gary Boggs wrote:

I forgot to add that there is a modified starter motor on the spool and
after the glider releases, the operator reels in the line and the
parachute
falls down very near the tow vehicle. During the initial trials we were
using some poly rope and had some trouble with the line cutting into the
wrapped line on the real and had a few line breaks. We increased the
drum
diameter and went to synthetic line and have had no more line breaks
since.


"Gary Boggs" wrote in message
...

The reason we are using a pay out winch instead of a regular winch is
that
at our airport, there are taxi ways on both sides of the main runway,
and

no

large grass area that we could use that wouldn't involve having the
winch
line laying across places that other planes would have to taxi across.

The

airport managers and I agreed that this would make it very difficult and
dangerous to use a normal long line winch here. A couple of members of

the

Willamette Valley Soaring Club had already built this pay out winch to

near

completion so I approached the airport managers here in Hood River with

the

idea of using this type of winch instead. They agreed that this would
be
much safer and an acceptable launch method.

I bought the winch from my buddies and have made several refinements to

work

out some bugs and now it's working very well. The pay out winch has a

spool

of rope with a disc brake on it, set to let line out when the glider
pulls
harder than the drag is set. In some ways this is safer than a normal

winch

because it makes it almost impossible to break the line if the drag is
set
correctly. If the glider balloons up, the line just pays out faster,
instead of breaking, while still maintaining the pull on the line.

I don't think we are able to get quite as high as we would be able to
with

a

regular winch but with 3000ft of runway and no wind, we get 800 to 1000
feet and with a 20mph wind, we have gotten as high as 1300ft so far in
our
2-33 with a cg hook. We are still working on just what is the optimal

speed

for the tow vehicle and drag setting and I'm hoping we will be able to
get
as high as 1500ft.

Gary Boggs, CFIG
3650 Airport Drive
Hood River, OR
97031-9613
541.490.5557
503.708.8869



"Gary Boggs" wrote in message
...

I thought I'd post this with a new subject line so no one missed it.

We put a video of our pay-out winch on our web site:

http://www.nwskysports.com/

"Gary Boggs" wrote in message
...
My guess as to the force on line is probably something like 300lbs? I
think
the next mod we will incorporate will be a tensiometer on the line. Right
now we use a pressure gauge on the brake line and as the disc brake heats
up, the pressure required to get the correct tension on the line goes up.
It would work much better if our winch operator was able to monitor the
actual tension on the line, instead of the pressure on the brake. If we
could find an electronic tensiometer, we could program it to operate the
brake, but this would make the winch even more complicated and expensive.
I've searched the web for available tensiometers, but found nothing
suitable,
so I think we will just build one into our system.

The tension on the line should be about the same as the gross weight of the
glider. 300 pounds will result in a poor launch. The tension on the line
is the result of cooperation between the pilot and the winch operator. No
matter how hard the winch tries to increase the line tension it won't happen
unless the glider pilot pulls up.

A better idea is to use an RC model airplane telemetry package like RCAT to
send the glider airspeed to the winch operator and let him control that.
The glider pilot can then control the line tension with the elevator.

I think it will require more power than a starter motor for that though.

Bill Daniels

Bill, this is a payout winch. The starter motor is for reeling the line
back in after the truck mounted winch gets to the end of the runway. Check
out the video:

http://www.nwskysports.com/




"Bill Daniels" wrote in message
news:QIV6d.147361$D%.8795@attbi_s51...

"Gary Boggs" wrote in message
...
My guess as to the force on line is probably something like 300lbs? I
think
the next mod we will incorporate will be a tensiometer on the line.
Right
now we use a pressure gauge on the brake line and as the disc brake
heats
up, the pressure required to get the correct tension on the line goes
up.
It would work much better if our winch operator was able to monitor the
actual tension on the line, instead of the pressure on the brake. If we
could find an electronic tensiometer, we could program it to operate the
brake, but this would make the winch even more complicated and
expensive.
I've searched the web for available tensiometers, but found nothing
suitable,
so I think we will just build one into our system.

The tension on the line should be about the same as the gross weight of
the
glider. 300 pounds will result in a poor launch. The tension on the line
is the result of cooperation between the pilot and the winch operator. No
matter how hard the winch tries to increase the line tension it won't
happen
unless the glider pilot pulls up.

A better idea is to use an RC model airplane telemetry package like RCAT
to
send the glider airspeed to the winch operator and let him control that.
The glider pilot can then control the line tension with the elevator.

I think it will require more power than a starter motor for that though.

Bill Daniels

"Gary Boggs" wrote in message
...
Bill, this is a payout winch. The starter motor is for reeling the line
back in after the truck mounted winch gets to the end of the runway.
Check
out the video:

http://www.nwskysports.com/

The video is a file type that my media player won't recognize. I've decided
against downloading Real and Quicktime after encountering a lot of security
issues with them.

If the starter motor is only used for retrieving the rope after the glider
releases and the truck provides all the motive power for the launch then a
starter motor is fine. I still say get the glider airspeed and let the
pilot decide how much tension to put on the rope.

Bill Daniels

In article QIV6d.147361$D%.8795@attbi_s51,
"Bill Daniels" wrote:

"Gary Boggs" wrote in message
...
My guess as to the force on line is probably something like 300lbs? I
think
the next mod we will incorporate will be a tensiometer on the line. Right
now we use a pressure gauge on the brake line and as the disc brake heats
up, the pressure required to get the correct tension on the line goes up.
It would work much better if our winch operator was able to monitor the
actual tension on the line, instead of the pressure on the brake. If we
could find an electronic tensiometer, we could program it to operate the
brake, but this would make the winch even more complicated and expensive.
I've searched the web for available tensiometers, but found nothing
suitable,
so I think we will just build one into our system.

The tension on the line should be about the same as the gross weight of the
glider. 300 pounds will result in a poor launch. The tension on the line
is the result of cooperation between the pilot and the winch operator. No
matter how hard the winch tries to increase the line tension it won't happen
unless the glider pilot pulls up.

A better idea is to use an RC model airplane telemetry package like RCAT to
send the glider airspeed to the winch operator and let him control that.
The glider pilot can then control the line tension with the elevator.

I think it will require more power than a starter motor for that though.

Bill Daniels


This looks very similar to what we were doing last Sunday, at the 3000'
New Jerusalem airport, near Tracy, California. The payout winch we used
was manufactured by an outfit called Airtime of Lubbock (Texas), and is
known as an ATOL winch.

It has a guage mounted on the hydraulic master cylinder to show how much
force is being exerted on the disc brake, force is hand adjustable
during tow by the operator, and also has a large lever to enable an
operator to dump all tension in the event of a lock out emergency.

It also has a "level wind" feature much like a fishing reel, to feed the
line back and forth across the drum. this is connected to a rewind
motor controlled by a hand held trigger, for the operator.

The whole thing is mounted on a platform which plugs into a 2" receiver
hitch. The motor is either driven by jumper cables up to the truck
battery, or a battery mounted alongside the winch.

The operation is like this: one person drives the truck, one person sits
in back to monitor/adjust pressure and release if necessary, and we had
a second person in back to run the radio communication with the pilot
and other field traffic.

The first time we did it, the truck went to 30mph, the tension was set
for 45#, and I used 10 degress of flaps with full back stick. I got a
600 foot tow into a 10mph wind. The operator said he didn't think I was
pulling the rope off the drum very well.

The second time, the truck went to 40mph, tension was backed down to
30#, I used 20 degrees of flap, and full back stick. This time I got to
nearly 1000 feet at about 600 fpm. We used these settings for the rest
of the day.

The only functional problem we're facing is that there seems to be too
much slack in the chain between the motor and the drum, so sometimes the
chain jumps the sprockets and we have to terminate the tow early. I'm
looking at installing an idler gear with which we can adjust the chain
tension.

We're still figuring out the correct operational parameters, and anyone
with experience is welcome to give us constructive comments!

Oh, I was flying my BrightStar SWIFT, which is an ultralight composite
flying wing design. Total weight was about 300#.

Best regards,
Ken
San Jose, CA

Gary, have you tried having the tow vehicle do a 180 at the end of the
taxiway and then do another pull back down the runway in the opposite
direction? You could probably get another 500'- 700' more height.
Hang gliders have done this successfully with payout winches.
However, they do have the advantage of a downward view of the tow
vehicle. __Mike




"Gary Boggs" wrote in message ...
Bill, this is a payout winch. The starter motor is for reeling the line
back in after the truck mounted winch gets to the end of the runway. Check
out the video:

http://www.nwskysports.com/




"Bill Daniels" wrote in message
news:QIV6d.147361$D%.8795@attbi_s51...

"Gary Boggs" wrote in message
...
My guess as to the force on line is probably something like 300lbs? I
think
the next mod we will incorporate will be a tensiometer on the line.
Right
now we use a pressure gauge on the brake line and as the disc brake
heats
up, the pressure required to get the correct tension on the line goes
up.
It would work much better if our winch operator was able to monitor the
actual tension on the line, instead of the pressure on the brake. If we
could find an electronic tensiometer, we could program it to operate the
brake, but this would make the winch even more complicated and
expensive.
I've searched the web for available tensiometers, but found nothing
suitable,
so I think we will just build one into our system.

The tension on the line should be about the same as the gross weight of
the
glider. 300 pounds will result in a poor launch. The tension on the line
is the result of cooperation between the pilot and the winch operator. No
matter how hard the winch tries to increase the line tension it won't
happen
unless the glider pilot pulls up.

A better idea is to use an RC model airplane telemetry package like RCAT
to
send the glider airspeed to the winch operator and let him control that.
The glider pilot can then control the line tension with the elevator.

I think it will require more power than a starter motor for that though.

Bill Daniels