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#31
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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. |
#32
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Glider Winch Manufacturers or Plans to make???
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/pulleylaunch/
In the interest of keeping a good argument going, here is another yahoo group with an interesting and far cheaper method of flinging a glider into the air. |
#33
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Glider Winch Manufacturers or Plans to make???
On Jul 25, 4:11*pm, Steve Davis
wrote: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/pulleylaunch/* In the interest of keeping a good argument going, here is another yahoo group with an interesting and far cheaper method of flinging a glider into the air. A very activity group. LOW |
#34
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Glider Winch Manufacturers or Plans to make???
The advantages of car launching seem to be somewhat exaggerated on this
site! The problem is that you need a fastish 300hp+ vehicle with an automatic gearbox to launch heavy modern gliders, and these are getting harder to find in these fuel frugal days. In my experience (we used to autotow launch at my club in the past) winches give much higher launches for a given length of run, and you don't need a hard runway which will wear the cables out through abrasion very quickly anyway. Derek Copeland At 01:14 26 July 2008, Uncle Fuzzy wrote: On Jul 25, 4:11=A0pm, Steve Davis wrote: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/pulleylaunch/=A0 In the interest of keeping a good argument going, here is another yahoo group with an interesting and far cheaper method of flinging a glider int= o the air. A very activity group. LOW |
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