I found a sale on beach umbrellas at a local furniture store and picked one up for 10 bucks. I spent two evenings at the sewing machine and made it into a drogue chute. Today Jason and I tied it onto the line and rolled out 500' and tested it out. It wound the spool uber tight. We then pulled just about all the line off and wound it tight. Jason was first up and had a premature release right off the truck. We figured the chute bridle wound up on the link knife and cut him off early. Extended the chute bridle and tried again. This time the tow went awesome. The line tension gage was dead steady and easy to change. No guessing the tow tension. I hit the end of the road and he pinned off into a thermal and got his first good payout tow and fist good thermaling flight all at once. He stayed up for a half hour and came down to tow me up. We loaded up my wing and up I went. This has to be one of the smoothest tow rigs I've ever been on. About half way into my tow I got into a great thermal and intended to tow through it but as I corrected from a right wing up I felt the tug on my left wrist and like that I was auto released. I stayed in that thermal and topped it out and returned to the ground for another go. I added a little length to my release pull string and went again. This tow was too slow a driver and I was straight over the truck for the duration and not climbing too much. After wondering if I would make it back to launch I released and headed for it. Caught a small ratty thermal on the way to get enough hight to make it there and landed.
I am very impressed with the quality of tow this winch provides. There is no guessing what's going on on the line and rewind is quick. This will lead to quick turn around and easy to operate.
I snapped a few pictures.
The rig all ready to go
Jason landing
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