Jeff, With all the telemetry available now it would be an interesting study to see what results in the highest launch. In my opinion the most important factors are the wind or thermal activity, the stretch of the line, and the strength of the airframe.
The whole point about cambering the wing and getting lots of tension initially is to get the most potential energy out of the line. If it can't all be created to kinetic energy at the zoom, then it is just a case of burning out brushes on the winch. I always shake my head when I see someone really tension up, full pedal, then fly off at the wrong time without a zoom, maybe just a flat trajectory going a little faster. Dr. Drela did some launch sims comparing 6 volt and 12 volt winches. The most important factor was the speed at the top of the launch. If you can do it with tapping, great. The sim indicated that full pedal was the best way. There are a lot of other factors he put into the equation, such as line elasticity, line diameter (resultant drag on the line), weight of the plane, drum diameter, etc. You can find the results here: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Allegro-Lite/files/Winch_Launch/ I hear what everyone is saying about the lost art of winching a fragile plane. I have a Bird of Time that would most likely fold the wings under a full pedal winch into a 10 mph headwind, yet it goes up fine without damage if I tap carefully and don't zoom too hard. The Icon, on the other hand, can take just about any kind of abuse. Because it is F3J related, the idea is to get off the line quickly, hence lots of tension and smoked winches (I know, I'm the club equipment manager). JE -- Erickson Architects John R. Erickson, AIA > From: Jeff Steifel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Date: Wed, 18 May 2005 08:54:42 -0400 > To: RCSE <soaring@airage.com> > Subject: Re: [RCSE] OVSS and Line Breaks > > Let's discuss launch for a minute. I think TK hit on something that gets > lost: technique. > Why do guys do pedal to the metal launches? > Is it to get more altitude? > More zoom? > Trash the brushes on the winches? RCSE-List facilities provided by Model Airplane News. Send "subscribe" and "unsubscribe" requests to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please note that subscribe and unsubscribe messages must be sent in text only format with MIME turned off. Email sent from web based email such as Hotmail and AOL are generally NOT in text format
