On Sunday, February 16, 2020 at 9:54:38 AM UTC+13, Martin Gregorie wrote:
On Sat, 15 Feb 2020 11:44:54 -0800, son_of_flubber wrote:

Another 'Club Class' glider to consider is the SZD 51-1. The Junior is
benign, built to sustain hard landings, has very effective airbrakes,
it slips, PU painted at the factory (no gel coat liability), fun to fly
well-harmonized controls, and designed from the ground up to be a single
seat trainer. Limited aerobatics permitted.

Yes, my club owns two Juniors, which are used as the next step after the
ASK-21 for our newly soloed pilots. I agree with all the things you said
about them and have a lot of time on them too: I got my Bronze and did
all legs of the Silver C in our Juniors, so I flew them fore about a year
before converting to our high performance fleet (Pegase 90 and Discus).

The only thing I'd add is that you MUST read the Junior's POH before
spinning one: Juniors have three slightly different spin behaviours
depending on pilot weight and it helps to know which to expect.

Another good glider for low-time pilots is the 205 Club Libelle - there's
one in our club and its owners really love it. Big cockpit, but there
were only 171 made, so they're even rarer than SZD Juniors.


--
Martin | martin at
Gregorie | gregorie dot org

Another strong point is that all of the Juniors that I've flown also have 'automatic' hookups and two Tost releases, one for aerotow and one for winch.. The only con that I know of is that best glide is at 43 knots and the polar drops off fast, and that makes 'buddy flying' with higher performance ships more complicated. That said, the Junior will outclimb high performance ships especially if you're a lighter weight pilot, and suitable for weak lift local flights on days when the high performance ships don't even bother to assemble.