Glider Winches - can they be called safe? -- Howard Callaghan

I am by no means an expert on this subject, but they say that "only a fool will not learn from experience" and I now consider myself to be experienced in the dangers inherent in the use of glider winches.

The use of a bicycle speeds up line retrieval at Jomac and, whilst engaging in this simple exercise one Sunday, I found myself up-ended on the bike with the winch line happily eating away at my right leg. Field administering of the wound effectively prevented further complications, although the doctor consulted certainly informed me that accidents such as this can have disastrous consequences.

So what have I learnt?

The winch must be made safe when persons are handling the line!

Many winches do have very effective means of dis-enabling the motor. This includes key-locks and isolating switches attached to the winch frame.

Where no such mechanical means of dis-enabling the winch is available, consider the following when the winch is to be disabled..
A length of tube is attached to the winch and into this is inserted a red flag (similar to that seen at active shooting ranges)
Also, a simple cap (I used an aerosol spray can cap) is placed over the activator button, rendering this harmless.

Whatever the means of de-activating the winch, my advice is do this whenever anybody is handling the line -- I have proved heavy duty nylon takes no prisoners when it is abused.

Howard Callaghan.

Lionel Brink's report on the F3J World Champs

“Working time will start in 5 seconds..., 4..., 3..., 2..., 1..., ping! The tortured sound of line stretching & the snap of parachutes seconds later.”

In 2006, Slovakia played host to the F3J world championships & in true style, managed to achieve a magnificently organized event, with some of the best RC glider pilots from all over the world competing against one another.

Read more....(600k word DOC)

The 2006 Control Line World Champs -- Keith Renecle

This time the world champs were held in Spain in a city called Valladolid. The name is pronounced “Vaya-dolleeth” and it’s quite easy if you remove your teeth and thspeek like thees! Our South African representation consisted of myself, Loren Nell, and our chief supporter, my wife Bokkie. We normally have a 3 person team, so this time we were down to just two, and we entered in F2B aerobatics. There are four FAI categories for control-line events, and they are F2A speed, F2B aerobatics, F2C team racing, and F2D combat. An interesting fact is that the C/L world champs are the biggest event on the FAI sporting calendar, with around 350 competitors plus support crews. You can imagine the organization required to arrange for such an event. It takes around four years to prepare for this, and you need a really good crew of helpers. Well done to Yolanda Garcia del Fuentes, and her team for doing this. Just by the way, to see all the results, they are posted on the web on many sites, but a good one for all things control-line, is Goran Olsson’s Hemisphere of Fun at http://www.go-cl.se/cl.html.

Read more here..., (400k word DOC).

Round-a-Bout for August 2006

Read Round-a-Bout here

F3J World Champs

Evan sent in this photo of Craig, Simon and Ilma.
There's more where this came from. I'll ask Evan to post them on Flickr.

SA F3J team in Slovakia

Peter Eagle sent me this fine photo. I'm not sure who took it but as the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words.
More info here.

Aaaaaagh! and you thought LiPo batteries were dangerous -- Andre Kilian reminds us to be careful

Here's a pic of my 12V charging battery that was short-circuited and the results on my workbench a few minutes later.





My mistake was to leave the poles open - would not even think of doing that with a Nicad or Lipo battery, but without realising it I left a much more dangerous source of energy open.

Needless to say that I now intend to keep the battery poles covered at all times...
Fortunately I had a car charger connected to the battery (I leave it connected permanently) and the electricity tripped when the cables burnt through, alerting me to a problem. The concrete ceiling also helped - if it was a normal house or garage the whole place would have burnt down.

Regards,

Andre

Ps.

It took me a week to clean up my workshop. Most damage was done by smoke and soot!