This one, once you "got going" towed just right with the stick near center....but on initial take off, if you didn't have the stick forward, it would "kite"...In gliding flight it was fine...trim worked as you'd expect and stick was where you'd figured it should be. Thermalled great and benign stall..

But maybe this glider was "cursed" because some other weird stuff happened....

We had one club member, and every time he flew it, it released prematurely from tow....never happened to anyone else, just him...and every time...The guy was big and tall...and had big feet and wore big shoes...we figured he must have gotten his feet against the release cable...but we could not simulate the deal on the ground...

Then the glider had a series of flights where it did not release from tow! This happened to several pilots...it did release after several pulls on the release cable and some cursing etc...One time I think they intentionally broke the rope...

When we had those release failures, we checked the release on the ground...under tension, without tension, with extreme tension and all ways we could think of...never failed on the ground...

Finally, I took the whole interior apart...hidden in the tow hook mechanism was a "trim screw" which must have fallen out of somewhere, and was bouncing around in the tow mech...most of the time it stayed out of the way, but it could jam...

They big foot guy moved away, and we never had another release problem...the glider served the club well for many years and many hours...until it finally got put out of its misery!

Cookie







On Wednesday, January 7, 2015 7:03:46 PM UTC-5, Tony V wrote:
On 1/7/2015 3:48 PM, kirk.stant wrote:

That sounds like there was a real problem with the CG or stab/elevator rigging (or the wing incidence?) on that particular B4. Long ago, I flew a couple of B4s (no, actually, it was the same one in two different places, Vacaville and Estrella, separated by several years!) and other than pitch being a bit sensitive (kind of like a 1-26), it otherwise was an easy plane to fly. Definitely did NOT have to hold the stick forward for takeoff or tow!

I agree. I have about 70 flights in 2 different B4s and both would aero
tow normally with the stick more or less centered.

Tony "6N"