Andreas,
I agree that would seem to be a problem for that location.
But I
have not seen it arise for the main winch rope. We do use a 15 metre length
of stiffer and thicker rope after the main winch rope which also might help
counteract that.

The cost and wear properties on our grass strip, plus the almost complete
lack of winch failures is a real plus. Even nicer is the handling side for
the winch man. It's 100% safer and we get no cut fingers. A repair
(splice) can be carried out in a few minutes with a pen knife and some tape
to cover the 3 ends of the rope. The section closest to the winch suffers
the
most wear, but this is easily and quickly replaced and minimal cost.Also
the guide rolls on the winch after about 8 months of use show zero wear.

I drive the winch every few weeks and after the 18 months of so of usage I
would hate to go back to steel. And as said before the amount of weak link
failures is virtually nil now.

Cheers,
Malcolm...


"Andreas Maurer" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 18 Jan 2008 16:16:22 GMT, "Malcolm Austin"
wrote:

At our club (Denbigh GC, UK) we changed the steel wire for a type of
polypropylene
rope. The shock absorbing properties of this have reduced the incidence
of
weak link
breaks to almost zero.

I know of a club that also used a polypropylene rope between aircraft
and weak link.
They stopped using that after this rope got entangled within the gear
of an ASK-21, leading to a severe ground loop immediately prior to
lift-off.

The stiffness of the steel wire prevents such an event.


Bye
Andreas