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Winch Design and Construction

The Winch Design Group web site provides a valuable resource for keeping abreast of the latest developments in winch launch.

George Moore of Spokane, Washington, has written 15 outstanding and definitive technical papers on winch dynamics, performance and automation which are available on the Winch Design web site at the following link Winch Dynamics, Performance and Automation.

George Moore and Bill Daniels are strong proponents of the advantages of automatic tension-controlled winches rather than the older speed-controlled winches. Bill Daniels and George Moore have written a general paper the design consideration of winch construction.
An engineering thesis entitled "Numeric Simulation of a Glider Winch Launch" by Christoph G. Santel of the Rheinisch-Westfalische Technische Hochschule Aachen provides the results of a simulation of the forces and dynamics during the winch launch of an ASK21.

An interesting example of winch launching can be seen in a couple of videos from YouTube that show a Fox glider set the winch launch altitude record following by the pilot doing aerobatics on the way down. For the view of the flight from the MDM Fox aerobatic glider see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VlRd9-wxQI (Search YouTube for"Hohenflug" if the link doesn't work.). A view of the modified Tost winch is at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFKsjDIjmDg (Search YouTube for "Schleppwinde". The winch launched glider reaches almost 1400m, that is. 4500ft. The aerobatics on the descent include snap rolls, outside loops and the g-meter reads +/- 6G afterwards.

 

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