Winch Hardware - To swivel or not swivel

Bill Gribble wrote:
F.L. Whiteley writes

Has anyone had experience with swivel installations


I'm no expert, and I'm sure somebody else from my club will correct me
if I'm wrong, but I believe we use three locking swivels in our setup,
one between the plastic-sheathed strop and the thick connecting rope,
another between the rope and drogue chute, and the third between the
drogue and the stranded steel cable used by our Skylaunch winches.

I do know, within my experience at least, that the setup appears to be
very effective in that we don't have any problems with twisting or
kinking in the cables.


I believe the swivel on our winch cables lock under tension, i.e. locked
during a launch but free once the glider is off the cable to allow the
drogue chute to rotate without twisting the cable when winding in.

Nick Hill

From the Tost homepage:

"Use swivel only if necessary, and then only for unwinding cable, never
while launching."

Stefan