Its been a good few years now, but so long as you are prepared its a fine
machine to winch launch.

Bear in mind that it likely to be a lot lighter than two seater gliders or
even glass single seaters you have winched before, so it accelerates a lot
faster even on 'mild' winch machines, with powerful winches see if you can
hold off winching until you know you don't have a newbie winch driver on
the other end. old hands know to be a litte more gentle with the throttle.

The glider will feel like it has leapt skywards, , expect to hold close
to full, if not full, forward stick on the early rollout and climb and
carry out a transition into normal speed/attitude control once you have
sufficient flying speed and peg the launch like you have been taught
(check the manual for speeds etc).

If you can persuade someone to (carefully) hold the tail skid of the
glider down on the ground for the initial movement of the launch thats a
bonus, I used to find that the glider sits on its nose skid with its
tail in the air (I'm not light) and if the winch driver is anything other
than incredibly gentle, as soon as the glider moves, its jerked, and the
tail whacks the ground and that can accentuate the leaping skyward feel of
the initial launch, I've not heard of damage being done to the tail but I
wouldn't be surprised if its happened in the past if a real hamfisted
driver handles the throttle.

I used to find that at the top of the launch, the K8 would often back
release just as I was thinking of pulling the release knob...

Its a pleasure to fly, never did cross country in it, but it was a
hoot on a non-soarable day to take a launch and chuck the old thing
aroud the sky a little, very benign haldling, its also adequate for local
soaring on a good day when nothing else was available..

Have fun with it, get a good briefing with a local instructor and a few
other pilots that are a little more current than me and fly away.

Peter

On Sun, 07 Sep 2008 20:53:38 +0000, Jimmie L. 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