On Thursday, September 13, 2012 5:00:03 AM UTC-5, Colin Roney wrote:
Has anyone acquired some experience of using one of the proprietry single

man rigging aids for this glider?

If so, which one did they choose and were there any special features

incorporated in the design that made rigging easier?

Any other tips would be much appreciated.

Colin,

I suggest joining the Lak-12 Yahoo Group, on which rigging has been discussed quite a bit. You can find it he

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lak12/

I will contradict what others have said here - once you know what you're doing, and you have the right tools, the Lak-12 is really not that difficult to rig.

When I got mine, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, and rigging was a miserable and prolonged experience. Now that I know what I'm doing, it is no big deal for me with one helper. It is a very nice flying plane, and it would have a much better reputation if everyone who rigged it knew the tricks. Most sailplanes have rigging nuances, but you can muscle your way through most of them. You simply cannot brute-force your way through assembling the Lak - everything must be lined up correctly - you have to use finesse, rather than force.

If you have a factory rigger, it is fine for the job. Two drawbacks to it are that it has difficult height adjustment, and that it holds the flap fixed in place. The first can be addressed by a trailer ramp jack that allows the fuselage to be raised and lowered (superior to raising/lowering the wings, in my opinion). The second can be addressed by setting the flap handle in the cockpit to "0" prior to attaching the wings.

Steve's WingRigger is a very nicely built one-man rigger (note - I still use two people for the Lak, even with a one-man rigger). In my opinion, it also really isn't made for finely-tuned height adjustment, but it will let you move the flap with the wing securely installed. The WingRigger will also collapse better for storage than the Lak factory rigger.

The hardest to overcome obstacle to easy assembly is the factory trailer. However, there are Lak owners who have modified the factory trailer to make the assembly much easier. As the flying season winds down (assuming you're in the Northern Hemisphere), now is the time to spend some time to make next season's assemblies easier.

-Andy