[frizzen]

Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead! (but I still want somebody to double check that math)

Looking at the gearbox's reduction number of a whopping 22.176:1 I knew I needed more reduction, so I went ahead and mounted the 22 T idler onto the 10 T gearbox input shaft. Not the easiest, and needed a little more hacking than I'd intened to do, but it fit!

So then to make sure my winch actually works, I pulled the idler and axle gear off a ZZ-M with green motor and 7 T pinion, meshed that with my new gearbox input gear (the 22 T, so the overall ratio at the moment is around 69:1) stuck a weight on my temporary winch line, and ran it in and out to make sure I wouldn't have kink problems. Nice. That worked, so I hooked up to a Charg-N-Go truck clone, and dragged it across my keyboard. Sweet. So I hooked it up to another ZZ-M, and I dragged that across my keyboard. So far so good! Since it still didn't fail, I put the ZZ-M on the desk next to keyboard with 1 axle resting on edge of the board, the winching truck on opposite side of keyboard, dragged it up and across!!! Hell yeah, the winch does work!

So, next because I know that tiny motor won't have nearly the torque of the ZZ-M motors, I figured I should check to see if the gearbox can do a dead line pull without the help of any motor being meshed in. So I raised the gearbox until I had the monster airborn, and the gearing is low enough it didn't wind out my cable. To make sure it wasn't stuck, I started spinning the input gear, and the Truck-On-A-Rope would slowly raise and lower. Rock and roll!!!
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From this, I now know that:
1, this will work.
2, seeing this in operation is gonna be even cooler than the winch on Desperado.
3, even if the IR Rod's motor is absurdly gutless it will still let me vary the length of line, even if it can't do a true winching on a ZZ-M.
4, I need to hurry up and get the TX part finished so I can test the RX.
5, this is gonna be so wicked, and I've gotta decide if I want "Warn" or "Superwinch" decals for the body.
6, I should probably go to bed