Indoor News and Views

The Un-Winder

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After a decent flying session, I e-mailed Kang Lee. He e-mails me back, tells me I am doing great, but wants some more data. How many turns remaining at the end of each flight?

Me: I don’t know.

Kang: Not sure it is all printable here, but the gist of it was that I was a lazy guy and that I needed to start recording that info as it will be important later.

I understood what he was saying. I could see the merit. There is just one problem. Me. There is no way I could see myself consistently unloading an F1D motor, hooking up my winder and counting backwards. Kang called it right: I’m too lazy.

This is what I confessed to Art Holtzman when I asked him to make me a doo-hickey, as I called it then.

Tell me what you want, he says.

I want half a winder. No handle. No chain. Just a counter and hook, something I can hook my rubber up to and have it give me the number of turns left.

Art: Can’t you just take the motor off and hook it up to the winder and turn the crank backwards like all the rest of the guys do it?

Mike: I think I just explained this. I’m too lazy to do that. I know myself.

Art: Give me a bit.

Understand that this is a Friday afternoon. An hour or two later, pictures of this device start to appear in my inbox. A bit later a fully built unit is being packaged up, some money is exchanged, and on Monday evening, it is sitting at my door.

The one of a kind Un-Winder!

The last couple of weeks I have had a lot of practice with this, what I dubbed ‘the Un-winder’, at the EAA contest and later at Racine Memorial Hall.

Now I can walk my model to my table, unhook the motor, attach it to the Un-Winder and get a count of how many turns remain. Easy as pie. Just apply some finger pressure to the motor if a lot of turns remain to slow the unwinding down – No brake or anything special is needed.

Note: I also own one of Art’s winders and love it – Art urged me to swap the larger counter from my early winder to the Un-Winder. The newer counter picture is shown on my winder picture below.

Art’s Chaingain winder with the new smaller counter.

Please contact Art for more information. Art Holtzman [upwind120@gmail.com]

Regards.
Mike Kirda