Similarly, landing on a hard (tar) runway with the wheel locked will give the
pilot the opportunity to purchase one of those expensive white stripes.

On many single seaters if the pilot lets the nose touch the tar no amount of
back on the stick is going to help till there is a significant amount of speed
and gell coat reduction.

Martin Gregorie wrote:
Cats wrote:
On Jan 11, 1:33 pm, Martin Gregorie
wrote:
snip
There are or were about 4 Juniors in the USA. Williams Soaring had one
in which I flew in 2001. It was the nicest Junior I've seen: in
excellent condition and retro-fitted with a hydraulic brake which
actually worked without binding. The brake activation was by applying
full air brake rather than the usual lever on the front of the air brake
handle.

That would be nice. Wish my glider could have that!

You've got the brake lever on the stick same as a Libelle, haven't you?

That works for me. The one snag with the air brake deployment with a
tail dragger is when you're going for a short field landing on wet
grass. If the wheel is locked when you touch down a variety of
interesting things might happen including but not limited to sliding
into the far hedge. One of our Discii nearly got totaled in similar
circumstances - very wet field, pilot landing toward hard things, hit
the brake and locked up the wheel which caused it to aquaplane.

The Williams Junior was operated off a hard runway, so this wasn't an
issue. In any case, as I'm sure you know, standard Junior brakes are
digital - either they don't work at all or they drag when off and stand
it on its nose when used. The brake lever on air brake handle is a bit
awkward too. Not that this bothers me - I think I've used them about
twice in well over 50 landings: properly held off they don't run far at
all.

Mainly it was nice to fly a Junior with a good, progressive wheel brake.