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/