Almost perfect payout winch launch.

A few safety issues safety issues.
The strop. i.e. the rope between the rings and the parachute appears to be
very flexible. If the glider roles forward when taking up slack and overuns
the cable it can easily get caught in the wheel box meaning the glider
cannot release at the top of the launch. Encasing this bit of rope in a
plastic tube (garden hose) should aleviate the problem.

This strop should also be quite long. We were using a short one at Lasham
for years until we had a winch failure just as the glider left the ground.
The chute opened and draped itself over the cockpit when the glider was a a
few feet in the air. A wonderful cure for constipation.

The payout winch does not appear to have any form of guilotine.
If the glider cannot release you need to have some way of freeing it from
the winch so it has a chance to make a landing.

The BGA advice on winch launching can be found here_
http://www.gliding.co.uk/bgainfo/saf...hlaunching.htm

Here's another video of our payout winch in operation at the Alvord Desert:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oP8bVgG8xJc

Boggs