recumpence
1 GW
Voltron said:You could market that to flat land hang gliding and paragliding operations... they would be salivating over that with the portability. How many feet of line will it hold?
It would beat the crap out of the normal setup...
View attachment 3
If you look close you can see the towline running out under where the front wheel was, and it runs thru a pulley anchored out in the field and back to the pilot to let the scooter operator be nearby.
On a really good day I've done a tow to 500 feet and dropped the line, then thermal-ed up to 9000 feet in flatland Fla. so it doesn't take a lot of initial altitude...
The cord length it will hold is dependant on the cord diameter. 1,500 feet is the max length cord it will hold if using 300 pound test Spectra cord. This cord is 800 pound test. It is much thicker. So, the drum will not hold as much cord. I believe it is 800 feet IIRC.
The only bummer about marketting this is cost. I have over $2,400 spent on this winch, not including the build time of roughly 25 hours. So, it would sell for something like $3,500 to $4,000. I doubt that is an acceptable marketing price. Of course, this could be built less costly. For instance, it has a $900 motor, a $300 ESC, $800 of fancy CNC machining, $180 for a high-end Spectra Fiber cord, etc.
I am nearly finished with the winch. Today I fabricated and installed the cord tensioner. It is a carbon fiber flex plate mounted on an angle machined into the feed block at the front of the winch. The entire assembly as you see it in these pictures weighs in at 32 pounds.
Matt