On Wed, 19 Jul 2017 07:44:52 -0700, Bruce Hoult wrote:

I've seen people flying ASW20s who try to ignore the flaps, and in
particular seem afraid to use landing flaps and end up touching down 75%
of the way down the runway and just generally ****ing things up. Perhaps
some people would do the same in a Ventus. But not if they're competent
in a flapped 2-seater, surely.

That's a good point. When I converted to an ASW-20 at about 250 hours, a
lot of which was in the club's Pegase 90, it never occurred to me to not
use the flaps: after all, if you've got them, why pretend they're not
there?

In any case I think the whole art of flying a flapped glider is learning
to replace trim changes with flap movements. The best analogy I can think
of for learning to fly flaps that its like somebody who learned to drive
with an automatic gearbox converting to a car with a manual box: its not
that changing gears is hard with a stick shift, but always being in the
right gear takes time to learn. I think it took me about 30 hours before
'always in the right flap' became fairly instinctive. The other surprise
was the way the trim lever gathered dust, but maybe that's unique to the
'20?

BTW, there's a Mini-Nimbus in my club. Its owner tells me its basically a
Std Cirrus fuselage and tail with a Mosquito wing. He speaks highly of it
and does a lot of XC kilometerage, so its obviously a good combination.


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martin@ | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
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