Your post reminded me of an towing anecdote. I did the weave and pull thing once at a PPSS night contest. I'd thrown together a 2M poly wing I had laying around on a CF boom and put a set of HLG tail feathers way back a la logic design. Tested OK in the back yard so I applied night ops and was all ready. At the field in the late afternoon it was blowing about 5-7 and knowing that the PPSS guys keep a half a mile of line on every winch I figured I'd just reel it all off and get "real" high for starts. Easy win - yea. A practice launch went great - but I held back so as not to show my cards. After it got good and dark they started the contest. I launched just like I practiced and got the plane to an ungodly height. Then I got greedy and went for a zoom too. Bad move - the night ops were on the bottom of the wing and down the fuse. Instant stealth glider. Never saw the plane until after it hit the ground - but it made a really awesome loud whistle and WUMP as it impacted the earth. No survivors. Just a tad of dynamic instability I suppose.
________________________________ From: Daryl Perkins [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sat 8/13/2005 404 PM To: D Hauch; soaring@airage.com Subject: Re: [RCSE] launch foreplay I used to do that all the time. It's a kick. Used to just stake the winch, walk back til I had just enough energy to launch the model, then start weaving super low, back and forth, to build line tension. You know you're good when it starts getting behind you in about 5 kts wind. Hopefully you have enough room to keep walking back. The better you get, you can start throwing the model with lighter and lighter tension. (And in lighter and lighter winds) You can do all kinds of things to build tension, then you need to learn how to lose the tension. Circling out to the sides, or very high will bleed off tension. Really tight circles will bleed tension, but the big circles build all kinds of tension on the downhill portion. You can get one heck of a launch without ever stepping on the pedal. Then go pick the chute up, and it's still on the long side of the winch. ;-) Before the exchange goes off on this - F3B style winch, brake doesn't allow line out, and monofilament line. You can do this to some degree on standard club winches and braided nylon, but the goal there is not to stretch the line, but to pull the line off the drum. D __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com 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 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
