I just started reviewing your training guide, Bill, and I must say,
"Excellent!" It's time to go fly my glider but I've saved the links and
will review all of your stuff for this evening for the refresher benefit,
though I probably won't be doing another ground launch until next "weekend"
at Roach Dry Lake.

I learned to fly off a winch back in the late 80s at Alice Springs, NT,
Australia (Bond Springs, actually) in a Twin Lark with about a mile of
cable, IIRC. Very exciting stuff and we got away every time!

When Black Forest purchased a winch from the AF Academy, Joe Berger and I
removed the small-block Chevy engine and transmission, extended the frame,
and installed a big-block 454 from a truck donated by Dave Rolley. It was
great fun and we used it during the Women's Soaring Seminar at Westcliffe
back in '92 (I think it was - I'll have to dig out my t-shirt to be
sure...). We also used the winch in the test flying of the first PW-5 to
arrive in those parts. IIRC, the FAA required that all maneuvers intended
to be flown had to be done during the test flying and the owner, being a new
pilot asked Tom Serkowski and I to do the flying. What fun we had!

Unfortunately, there was very little support for the winch and it fell into
disrepair. I recently heard that it had been sold.


"Bill D" wrote in message
...
On Thursday, June 20, 2013 8:00:14 PM UTC-6, Papa3 wrote:
Disregard... looks like the whole setup was non-standard, so a lot of the
usual rules of thumb go out the door. I hadn't noticed the very short
rope for example...

With the increased interest in ground launch, I do think it's useful to
revisit some of the old rules of thumb that used to be well known.
Sure, we need the SOP and manuals (which are still out there), but it
seems to me that it's good to review the underlying physics every now
and then.



I would suggest reading George Moores papers on winch launch. George has
taken the whole subject of ground launch into the 21st century with a very
deep and detailed mathematical analysis. His fresh view of the subject is
very welcome. His papers can be read in the files section of the Yahoo
group winchengineer and winchdesign.

If you'd like to take a look at my training materials, they can be
downloaded as PDF's.

Winch pilot training guide:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/...20Rev%2017.pdf

Winch training slide show:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/...20Training.pdf

Airfield operations:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/...operations.pdf