Mini-Winch for FES

At 17:06 04 March 2020, wrote:
On Wednesday, March 4, 2020 at 12:38:57 AM UTC-5, Paul
Remde wrote:
Hi,
=20
This is just a thought... =20
=20
I=E2=80=99ve recently been extremely interested in
the FES (Front
Electri=
c Sustainer) sailplanes. They are becoming quite popular.
Even very
high-=
performance racing sailplanes like the Ventus 3 are being
sold with FES
sys=
tems installed.
=20
I am the U.S. dealer for DG/LS and they offer the LS8e
neo with FES and
t=
he new DG-1001e neo with FES prototype will fly very
soon. It will be the
=
first 2-seat sailplane with FES. I would love to trade my
DG-1000S in for
=
a DG-1001e neo with FES, but so far my DG-1000S co-
owners aren't ready for
=
that upgrade.
=20
I'm not very experienced with winches and certainly not
an expert on
such=
matters, but I think there may be a nice market for a very
small electric
=
winch designed to get an FES-equipped sailplane just up to
100 feet =E2=80=
=93 high enough to use the FES to climb to the first
thermal. Even
self-la=
unch capable FES sailplanes would benefit from a small
winch because they
w=
ould save much more of the sailplane's battery for use later
in the flight
=
- since the initial takeoff roll requires a lot of power.
=20
You can see an interesting video showing an FES-
equipped sailplane
taking=
an autotow to about 100 feet he=20
https://youtu.be/pTeNKM2cXQk=20
=20
I would think that an electric winch could get a glider to
100 feet
quite=
easily and be quite small and relatively inexpensive. The
rope needed
wou=
ld be much less, and the drum could be much smaller
=E2=80=93 I imagine.
=20
A "level ground bungee launch" to 100 feet would be
another interesting
o=
ption. But I would think that would have risks from by the
bungee
snapping=
or coming loose and hurting someone.=20
=20
Any thoughts...? I'm just dreaming about the future of
gliding...
=20
Best Regards,
=20
Paul Remde
Cumulus Soaring, Inc.

Stupid question: since FES (Front Electric Sustainer)
sailplanes have a
pro=
peller in the front, with very little ground clearance, how
would you
attac=
h a tow rope without interfering with the propeller?
Perhaps you mean a
wi=
nch launch with the propeller stowed, turning on the FES
after releasing
fr=
om the rope. Seems like doing that at 100 feet is not a
great idea, even
t=
hough FES startup is a lot simpler and quicker than with
other sailplane
mo=
tor arrangements. So at the least you'd want to go to 300
feet or so -
hig=
h enough to try and start the FES, and land safely if that
does not work.

And as Herb said, for a good acceleration at the start,
you'd still need a
=
lot of power (at least 100 KW), nothing "mini" about that.

Yeah I'd like to hear more about (full-size) electric winches
in
developmen=
t. With the progress being made on electric cars (and
trucks) and their
ba=
tteries that seems like the future of winches.

Really? You think "progress being made on electric cars and
their batteries"? Sure there are a lot of them out there but
the battery technology they use has been around for years.
Lots of fancy batteries in development labs and in
Universities but none in any commercially available vehicle.

On Wed, 04 Mar 2020 18:46:18 +0000, Dave Walsh wrote:

Really? You think "progress being made on electric cars and their
batteries"? Sure there are a lot of them out there but the battery
technology they use has been around for years. Lots of fancy batteries
in development labs and in Universities but none in any commercially
available vehicle.


A new technology has just been announced, which uses sodium anodes and a
lithium-glass electrolyte. It claims greater durability, much less
flammability, and a considerably longer life than Lithium-ion.

Normally I'd go off muttering abouyt pipe-dreams except that the lead
researcher is John Goodenough. He has an excellent track record in this
field since he was in the team that developed the lithium-ion battery,
and shared the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for that. Says this tech could
be commercially successful in 5 - 10 years. The story is he

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/03/02/
canadian_firm_to_develop_goodenoughs_new_glass_bat tery/


=====

But, back to electric winches.

Here's the website for what looks to be the most successful German
electric winch maker:

http://www.startwinde.de/

The main site is in German, so if you don't read German, start here
instead:

https://onkelmaggus.beepworld.de/index.htm

This winch is basically a purpose-designed trailer containing a couple of
cable drums, a 200 kW electric motor and a big pile of lead-acid truck
batteries to act as a buffer between it and a 12-20 kW mains connection.

We looked at this system a few years back and decided that running cables
to the various places where we park our winch depending on the wind
direction was too expensive to justify going electric, so now we have a
Skylaunch and a Tost they refurbished, both running on LPG.


--
Martin | martin at
Gregorie | gregorie dot org

On 3/4/20 3:12 PM, Martin Gregorie wrote:
On Wed, 04 Mar 2020 18:46:18 +0000, Dave Walsh wrote:

Really? You think "progress being made on electric cars and their
batteries"? Sure there are a lot of them out there but the battery
technology they use has been around for years. Lots of fancy batteries
in development labs and in Universities but none in any commercially
available vehicle.


A new technology has just been announced, which uses sodium anodes and a
lithium-glass electrolyte. It claims greater durability, much less
flammability, and a considerably longer life than Lithium-ion.

Normally I'd go off muttering abouyt pipe-dreams except that the lead
researcher is John Goodenough. He has an excellent track record in this
field since he was in the team that developed the lithium-ion battery,
and shared the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for that. Says this tech could
be commercially successful in 5 - 10 years. The story is he

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/03/02/
canadian_firm_to_develop_goodenoughs_new_glass_bat tery/



Yep, that's been making the rounds again recently. Announced in 2016,
supposed to be commercially viable in another 5-10 years. The good
thing is Goodenough is 97 years old, and unlikely to be around to take
criticism if it doesn't pay off.

In the mean time, we've got lithium-sulfer, lithium-carbon dioxide,
lithium graphene, the mysterious IBM seawater battery, semi-solidstate
lithium, and others to look forward to. Which one will deliver the
miraculous increase in capacity in a couple years that the electric
plane makers keep talking about?

I see the Germans burned up their Lilium eVTOL "jet" prototype a few
days ago, 36 ducted fans on something targeted as an electric flying
taxi cab. If they're going to keep burning up prototypes, maybe they
should do it in Greta Thundberg's back yeard, so she can experience what
a fully involved lithium battery fire actually smells like.

On Wed, 04 Mar 2020 15:54:48 -0700, kinsell wrote:

Yep, that's been making the rounds again recently. Announced in 2016,
supposed to be commercially viable in another 5-10 years. The good
thing is Goodenough is 97 years old, and unlikely to be around to take
criticism if it doesn't pay off.

Only four years? So what?

Need I remind you that work started on lithium-ion cells in 1977,
Goodenough and Mizushima demonstrated a rechargeable Li-ion cell in 1979
and Yazami demonstrated the carbon anode in 1980, but it still took
another 11 years before Sony released the first commercial battery in
1991. Thats 14 years in development.

The first device I owned with a Li-ion battery was a Compaq iPAQ 3630 -
iPAQs weren't released until 2000, with the 3630 appearing in 2001 - a
mere 24 years after the first Li-ion battery was demonstrated.

So, I think we need a teensy bit more evidence than "its taken 4 years
already and still not on the shelves" to discount glass-technology
lithium batteries as vapour-ware.

I see the Germans burned up their Lilium eVTOL "jet" prototype a few
days ago, 36 ducted fans on something targeted as an electric flying
taxi cab. If they're going to keep burning up prototypes, maybe they
should do it in Greta Thundberg's back yeard, so she can experience what
a fully involved lithium battery fire actually smells like.

If you store a lot of energy in a battery containing a flammable
electrolyte, mistreat it in some way (short, overheat or puncture -
doesn't matter which) you shouldn't be surprised if bad things happen:
several crashed Teslas have caught fire hours after the crash happened.


--
Martin | martin at
Gregorie | gregorie dot org