I have some old Futaba Servos left over, thought I would make a Winch for my Venture, will cut a hole in the canopy to lower the line with a fishing grappling hook/basket on it, will make spool to fit where the horn goes, am told that removing the potentiometer inside will allow the servo to run continuosly, will need to add some type of limiter switch on the line to cut power to the servo when unwound and when rolled back up.....

Any thoughts, has anyone done this. :stupid:

You can't just remove the pot doesn't work like that. You center the pot so there is no servo movement at neutral stick glue it in place and then cut the stop tab that limits the servo's travel. Then instead of moving to a proportional location with control inputs the further away from center the faster the servo will spin. Keep in mind if you have a basket that weighs more than a pound and the line is out at any length allowing it to swing and you're almost grunted to crash the helli, the basket will pendulum and unless you're a DAMN good pilot that's used to a shifting center of mass you're gonna lose control of it REAL fast. Take a two a litter of soda and put it in a plastic bag and sling it around the handle bar so that it dangles about 6-12 inches bellow the bar and try to ride the bicycle and turn quickly.. That's about what it's like. To reduce complexity, just eyeball when the winch is wound up, down doesn't matter because it'll just go all the way down and the controls will reverse as it starts spooling the line up the opposite direction.

Skuzzy ..... You might want to try taking it to someone with experience in modifying the servos as you want .... Seems like someone mentioned that the R/C boat guys often do this sort of thing for the different functions they use in their scale ships... Hope this helps...