[Lil' Lavery]

Originally Posted by Kevin Ray

To the OP, you can very easily use a rachet and pawl (come-along type) to achieve your objective. Just mate it to the spool and manually release it at the end of the match.

I believe their intention is to be able to drive the device in both directions (they want to use the same motor to extend the device before retracting it). That doesn't completely rule out a ratchet/pawl, but it would mean they would need some sort of actuator to engage their pawl when necessary and disengage when not.