Everyone launched from the same small electric winch, some of us had little experience with using a winch including me. I should have practiced first but instead was flying my Whipit. On my first contest launch I popped off the winch and was down in 19 seconds, and wasn’t anywhere near the landing tape. Most of us were flying wood 2 meter sailplanes that were not penetrating very well and were hard to control on landing.
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| Looks Like a Boink |
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| Might be a Hiss |
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| Flaps Down |
On another round I got the hang of launching with the winch and my Gentle Lady sailplane came off right into an area of lift. The wind was so strong that my glider barely moved ahead but I kept it either going straight or went sideways to the wind but never did I let the glider head downwind. I had seen someone do this the week before at the discus launch contest. As the 4 minutes was approaching I made a couple of tight circles and the glider came down in a hurry but the landing was nowhere near the rope. On another flight the wind let up just a bit and I was able to get my glider positioned on a straight approach; that is a big part of a good – hiss landing. With some minor corrections I was able to slide it right along the rope. Everyone was impressed but I think there was a whole lot of luck in my landing.
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| My Lucky Landing |
Bill Kuhl
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