On Fri, 10 May 2013 06:19:27 -0700, son_of_flubber wrote:

Okay. I do have a few observations/opinions:

1)That the payout winch payouts more line and keeps line tension
constant when the glider hits lift seems an inherent advantage of this
approach when compared to a traditional winch launch.

As Bill says, a payout winch can't easily compensate for sink or a rear
gust at the start of a launch in calm conditions.

2)Don's suggestion that traditional winch launching is proven and that
there is therefore no reason to experiment with payout winching misses
the point. In a country where beefy pickup trucks are common, the
start-up costs for payout winching are much lower than traditional
winching. Secondly, far fewer humans need to be deployed and
coordinated to run a payout winch. The relevant question is "Which is
better to use on a dry lake bed, 1)autotow with payout winch or
2)traditional autotow? What are the tradeoffs?

As Don mentioned, we've been shown videos of payout winches with *no
gillotine fitted*. Its relatively rare, but cases of failures to release
have happened and are highly liable to be fatal without prompt use of the
guillotine. Even with a guillotine, what are the chances of a solo payout
winch driver noticing the problem in time? Even if he does notice, how
fast can he get to the guillotine's release and operate it?

I wouldn't accept a winch or auto-tow launch if there wasn't a functional
guillotine installed so that its release was instantly accessible to the
driver and/or the person monitoring the launch.


--
martin@ | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
org |