Finally Towing after all this time

Scooter towing on crop duster air strip in Woodrow South Carolina

Line Transfer Sucessful

Transfered 3500' of towline to the Scooter Tow today. 

Homemade PVC spool holder

Using lineman's block pulley attached to tree

McDonald Brummel eye splice

Level wind in action...  Using a broom to slow down the unwinding.

Turn Around Pulley

Turns out the rescue pulley in the previous post wont work. To large a gap between the side plates and sheave. Can't adjust it either.

I found a brand new Lineman's snatch block pulley on eBay.  Nearly identical to one Dave Broyles of Kite Enterprises uses and sells.  Got a good deal on it and it should last a long time.  Initially I'll just use this for transferring the towline to the scooter tow's spool.  It'll be a while before I'm ready to tow with a turn around pulley.

Tow Line

More stuff for the Scooter Tow

3500 feet of 1400 lb test Dyneema tow line.
Couple of splicing fids and some 250 lb weak links.
Heavy Duty Pulley - 4" sheave with sealed needle bearing.

Should be loading up the spool on the Scooter Tow sometime this weekend.

It's here

Scooter tow arrived safe and sound.

As it turns out, shipping an 800 lb trailer 2111 miles is a lot more expensive than I had imagined.  Still, even with the shipping, I have a functional Scooter Tow for a lot less (and a lot sooner) than it would have cost me to build one myself. 

So after procuring a new battery, the scooter started right up.  Next step, procure about 3000 feet of Spectra/Dyneema tow line.

Purchased Scooter Tow

My new used Scooter Tow

The master plan for the past few years has been to build my own stationary towing system for Paragliders.  So that I can start Paragliding here in the state where I actually live (South Carolina).  However, that plan required me to coble together my own metal shop and learn to weld (no mean feat). Well, I found a way to significantly accelerate the plan and bypass the metal shop/welding steps by buying a system that's already built.  I found a working Scooter tow that was up for auction (in Utah) and decided to go for it.  This is the description that was placed in the add:

Selling our Scooter tow. We are upgrading to a payout winch. 
This is a really nice tow setup with everything needed to safely tow. The Scooter is a 150CC Roketa, with upgraded Carburettor, intake, air cleaner, coil, plug, and exhaust. It is powerful and runs great. It was properly jetted to run with these upgrades.
The scooter engine powers a spool that holds the line. We had 3000 ft on the spool, it would hold up to 6000. Does not come with line. There is an oscillating arm to lay the line down evenly on the spool while paying in. 
There is a tension device that the line runs through so you can monitor line tension throughout the whole tow. It reads out on a gauge on the dash.
We were achieving roughly 1/3 of the height of the layed out line in altitude. In other words 1000 ft altitude with 3000 ft of line. 
The whole setup is mounted to a 4x8 trailer that is highway safe.

Asking 3000 or best offer. We will help coordinate shipping anywhere in the US, if you pay for it.

So now I need to arrange shipment back to sunny South Carolina and buy some new tow line for it.