Glider Winch Manufacturers or Plans to make???

The good things about the Skylaunch winch are it's relative simplicity,
reliability and ease of driving. The throttle presets take the guesswork
out of launching a glider at the end of a cable the best part of a mile
away.

I drive Tost winches with purely manual throttles and have to go on what I
can see, hear and feel. I generally open to the throttle over a count of
three to what I think is the about the correct setting for the glider type
and the conditions, and then hold it there for the first two-thirds of the
launch, after which I start to back off as the launch starts to flatten
out near the top as otherwise the glider will overspeed. If the glider
fails to rotate at the expected point, I further increase the throttle
until it does. Problem is that I can be fooled by pilots who don't fly
the expected launch profile, and can only hope to keep the launch
somewhere between a too fast and a too slow signal from the glider. I have
to tend towards the too fast side, as this is safer (less risk of the
glider stalling and spinning) and gives higher launches.

With big V8 gasoline/LPG engines, the constant throttle technique (as per
Skylaunch) does work surprisingly well and the required changes in cable
speed as the launch proceeds happen pretty automatically, as long as the
glider pilot flies the correct launch profile and makes full use of the
power provided.

If everything goes well I can launch a glider just as well and as high as
a Skylaunch or a computer controlled, diesel-hydraulic Hydrostart or
Hydrowinch, but I can't do so with the same consistency. A good launch
can be 200 to 300ft higher than a poor one.

Derek Copeland


At 18:41 14 July 2008, Don Johnstone wrote:


Glider winches should be simple, in general they are driven by simple
people. Probably the best winch I have driven or launched on is the
Munster Van Gelder. This winch provided an excellent launch, was very
simple to operate BUT it was heavy (8 tons with cable fitted) and
technically complicated to the extent that a simple failure of a small
cheap part could make it u/s. Far to complex. It could sink into a grass
airfield with ease, getting it out was a different story.
The Roman wich looks like a cut down Van Gelder and the Hydrowinch looks
even more complex.
The beauty of the Skylaunch is it's simplicity, modular easily
accesible
main components, engine gearbox and drive gear. Driving a winch should
be
viewed as a skilled occupation, far too often it is the lack of training
and unsuitability of winch drivers rather than the equipment itself
which
causes problems. Good winch operation comes with experience operators
and
no amount of technical wizardry can make up for that. Buy the skylaunch
and then get someone who knows about driving winches to train the
drivers,
someone with a proven record, not someone who thinks they know.