On Sun, 11 Nov 2018 15:54:13 -0800, AS wrote:

steel cables do have the tendency to crush drums when not wound up after
the last launch loosely, particularly if you were winching during a
warm/hot summer day and experience a drop in temperature over night.

When we used steel cable we didn't do anything special - just put the
winch, a Supacat, away with the cables wound from the last launches.
Maybe the Supacat drums were stronger than I realised: certainly the
whole winch looked to have been made with surplus battleship parts from
its air-cooled V8 diesel engine onward.

When we replaced the Supacat with a Skylaunch (and later added a Tost
that had been upgraded by Skylaunch) we switched to Spectra and the pull
out and rewind loosely after the last launch. Our field is mown grass
which doesn't obviously harm the heavy duty canvas and webbing parachutes
we use.

What I said initially applies only to those lightweight Fruity chutes.


--
Martin | martin at
Gregorie | gregorie dot org