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This should make most power pilots have kittens...
Finally, we got a break in the weather this weekend (it's been lousy
here for a while, no flying...) At our glider club, we can either use the tow plane or the winch to get the gliders in the air. Not many power pilots have come across the idea of flinging an aircraft airborne on the best part of a mile of steel piano wire, but we do this crazy thing. [Power pilots - whenever you see the glider port symbol on your chart, remember that there may be a winch there. They are less common in the US than over here, but they are used in the US, and the 1/8th inch steel cable will not be kind to you if you run into it. Never directly overfly gliderports below 3000' without talking to their radio operator]. Anyway, I made a short video of a winch launch at our club. The winch itself is powered by an inline 6 double overhead cam engine taken from a 4.2 litre Jaguar XJ6. The engine and running gear is mounted on the back of a truck. It powers a drum of steel cable, and the glider is attached on the other end. The 4.2L Jag engine has lots of power which results in spectacular acceleration of the glider. The video clip is at: http://www.alioth.net/Video/Winch-launch.mp4 (MPEG-4 format) (If you don't have the right codec etc. either use QuickTime or download the excellent free/open source VLC from http://www.videolan.org) Our next winch will use synthetic rope which is a fraction of the weight of steel cable (I think the entire run of synthetic rope will only weigh around 20kg). It will also be powered by an electronic fuel injected Jaguar V12 engine which came courtesy of last year's hurricane force storm which collapsed a garage on top of the donor car, completely flattening the roof and cabin area of the car, but leaving all the running gear completely intact :-) -- Dylan Smith, Port St Mary, Isle of Man Flying: http://www.dylansmith.net Oolite-Linux: an Elite tribute: http://oolite-linux.berlios.de Frontier Elite Universe: http://www.alioth.net |
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