At 04:27 16 April 2019, Steve Koerner wrote:
I know the pilot well and have had a lot of discussion with him
about
this.=
It turns out that this was the pilot's maiden flight in the JS3 and
it
tu=
rns out that the pilot has a bit of a thick brain and hadn't had
enough
opp=
ortunity to sit in the airplane and get familiar with the controls
before
s=
etting sail. =20

After 16 years flying the ASW-27, muscle memory was involved.
On
downwind,=
the dive brakes were used to adjust appropriate pattern altitude
starting
=
from a high pattern entry from overhead, then somewhere on
downwind the
bra=
kes were lastly put away. But, apparently not put away properly.
The JS3
ha=
s several detent stops for holding the dive brake open at partial
positions=
whereas the ASW-27 has only one detent at the closed and locked
position.
=
=20

By the time the poor SOB got to the base turn position he realized
he was
a=
bit lower than he expected and attributed that to sink. Bringing
the
turn=
around, he concluded that he was still in some pretty nasty sink.
His
spl=
it second decision was to get the airplane down on the deck for the
dual
pu=
rpose of getting into ground effect and secondly to get under the
sink
(sin=
k always has to end at ground level when the ground is itself
level). The
i=
ntention was to attack the perimeter fence fast so as to be able to
pop
ove=
r it then on to runway 30. Plan C would be to land before the fence
in the
=
sagebrush if there wasn't positively enough energy to get over the
fence.

As you already know from the original poster, plan C, landing
before the
fe=
nce was selected. Not surprisingly, speeding up with partially
deployed
ai=
r brakes caused energy to bleed all the more surely and quickly.

At touchdown a ground loop ensued that partly happened on top of
the dense
=
4 foot high brush. =20

There's now a little bit of fix-it to be done on this beautiful new
glider;=
nothing big enough to involve insurance companies.

When things go wrong there's takeaways... For JS3 flying, one
must put
eye=
balls on the divebrake lever and its detents. It's not just push
forward
a=
nd lock anymore. We've learned that the hard way. =20

The other takeaway relates to adequate familiarizing with a new
type. What
=
I've done in the past with new gliders is to take them home to my
workshop
=
and sit in them for hours just playing with the controls and the
instrument=
s to make sure that I was totally familiar before taking flight for
the
fir=
st time. That was impractical this time. The program letter
specifically
r=
equired first flight at Minden and we were especially time squeezed
because=
there were two of us who'd traveled long distance to get to
Minden to
pick=
up gliders and we needed to share one set of probes between two
gliders
(m=
y JS3 arrived without probes); I was nominated to go first being
the
borrow=
er in this instance. =20

Of course, that's all just sort of excuses. None of that should really
have=
been a problem. I was properly briefed on the dive brake detents
by a
know=
ledgeable instructor and signed off accordingly. That little
difference
in=
the dive brake control design, though, just wasn't sufficiently
engrained
=
in this pilot's brain quite yet.

It's unusual to accidentally land out on your maiden flight with a
brand
ne=
w airplane. I'm feeling like a dodo for doing so and sad to have
hurt my
n=
ew bird.

Another big thank you to Mike and Tim and to Jim Lee for helping
with my
re=
trieve in that nasty sage brush. =20

As a postscript, I'm not so sure that having detent stops for open
dive
bra=
kes is really a good idea. I'll think about that some more. I may
decide
t=
o remove the detents. I suspect that there are other variations of
the
pro=
blem that I just had. It would be especially embarrassing if
something
lik=
e this happened to me again.




Steve,

This post took a lot of courage to write. Thank you for your brutally
honest analysis. Hopefully, the post will have been worth it, if it
prevents just one other new JS-3 pilot from making the same error
in the future. Best wishes for quick repairs.

RO