Homemade Wingers
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Homemade
Wingers
After making the homemade dummy launchers, I needed wingers. Purchasing new or used ones was too expensive. So, as usual, I set out to make some myself.
While at a hunt test, I was talking with Derrik and Debi of Catalpa Acres Boykins about making some wingers. Derrik said he had made some PVC wingers years ago, but now was using store bought wingers instead. He offered to give me the some old radios and the wingers he had made. I quickly accepted his offer since that would save me the time and expense of having to make my own frames.
He gave me six wingers that he had either started, or had used in the past. I was able to restore four of them to functioning wingers. He also gave me some old radios, but I could not get them to work. They are obsolete, so repairing them is not an option.
This is one of them that all I did was replace the rubber to test it.
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The zip-ties were dry rotted but they did hold for a couple of tests.
I again used bow releases for the triggers.
I do not know where this aluminum extrusion came from, but I had a piece of it in my scrap aluminum. It worked great for making mounts for the releases and servos I used.
I also used a model airplane radio with two receivers so I could set up double retrieves.
I purchased more of the latex tubing to use for the rubbers. They work just fine. This is the speargun tubing I used from Amazon. You have to be careful to only get quality rubber tubing, or it may be spliced and have too many flaws.
Here are two of the wingers ready to use.
This is a video of the two wingers being tested. Do not pay attention to the poor performance of ZZ. She is much better trained now than then.
I am able to carry them all in an aluminum trailer along with my other training equipment.
The trailer is small enough that I can use a Miata to pull it.
01/01/2013