On 7th Sept '08, Jimmie Coulthard wrote :-

I am new to using this site. Can anyone tell me about winch launching
a
Ka8b and what one needs to expect. Thanks

On 8th Sept '08, Andy wrote :-

Several people have offered advice but no one seems to have asked what
your experience is.

If you have never done a winch launch before I'd say Karl's advice is
very valid. If, on the other hand, you have several hundred winch
launches in many different glider types, and are winch launch current,
then a 5 minute briefing should be sufficient.


Yes Andy! Why did not one of us think of asking Jimmie this simple
question a lot earlier, as we should have! - A quick reply from him would
have saved all the "guesswork" and got straight to the "appropriate"
level of advice! As you observe, dependant upon Jimmie's experience,
this would vary greatly.

During the 10 posts replying to Jimmie I have found myself thinking :-
"Why has Jimmie not brought this up face to face with an instructor at
his club, and either received a 'full blown' explanation, or if
appropriate to his experiance, a five minute briefing"?

We would be very interested to hear the reasons that you sent in your
original post Jimmie? Meanwhile, it appers that we are all pretty well
agreed on the problems and advantages of flying and wire launching the
Ka8! That's always good regarding any topic!


Tony Clark


PS. Don't forget to check the canopy is locked! A friend of mine once had
his Ka8 canopy detach itself halfway up a wire launch!