A rope drive can be unwound as seen in the Kitewinder video with the pulley-winch, and until it is completely unwound, not making power. At this time, the rope drive rotates by being driven by the wind turbine hub followed by the right angle return pulley, and drives the generator pulley at the bottom, making power.
The rope drive system is analogous here and generally for the devices described on the concerned topic Flettner balloon and VAWT side by side. The VAWT directly rotates the Flettner balloons which provide lift. And the rope drives transmit the energy from the VAWT via the Flettner balloons. But takeoff by rotation can be difficult without modification of the system. I see roughly what you want to do, and perhaps also what I would like (to be able to takeoff by rotating the balloons-VAWT set before the rope drive is completely unwound, which does not appear on the video).
Answer:
And also winches are adapted to alternating reel-out power phase with reel-in recovery phase, unlike the rope drive which works like a rope without end. “Discontinuous production” would be pumping (yo-yo) mode, where pull is used for power. While with a rope drive transmission the torque of the VAWT is transmitted to the ground via the rope drives around the balloons, with a stationary flight and with continuous power.
Maybe we could use the “double winch drive on both ends of a single cable” like a rope drive (rope without end) during operation, and like it is (double winch) to allow takeoff and landing by rotation. For this, the rope between the two winches should be connected when they are completely unwound.
Magenn was too inefficient (drag system, small blade area, heavy and slow generator aloft) but did not collapse for my knowledge.