On Thursday, April 9, 2015 at 5:50:24 PM UTC-4, Dave Nadler wrote:
New gliders can be especially exciting.

A few years back I was lurking about preparing to go fly,
when a guy landed back early after his first flight in his
just-off- the-boat supership, in a huge huff. He ran at me
yelling "Your damn instruments don't work. Now go fly that thing
and figure out what's wrong". Oooyyyy, I've heard this
before, and its not my stuff that's the problem ;-)

I strapped in and noticed the ASI reading 0 as I lifted off.
Had a lovely afternoon soaring in this gorgeous new machine,
gotta love that new-paint smell.
Without working instruments of course.
On landing still irate owner ran up to the glider (thought
I'd given him enough time to cool off). I popped the canopy
and pointed at the ASI - now indicating 50 knots.

There was about a quart of water in the static lines
and various other silliness. He hadn't washed it (literally
opened the trailer, got the paperwork, and flew).
Best guess is final wash at the factory?
I'm not sure how that much water can get in the statics.

I've also seen (not recently) logbooks recording test flights
that obviously never happened.

Take special care around new machines!

Hope that is helpful,
Best Regards, Dave

"Spring 1st flight", did the "puff on the TE probe" to make sure instruments worked.....

Yes they did, until 3/4 of the way down the runway where I was flying and the AS showed a much lower value.......

Either.....
-Tubes were gnawed by rodents over the winter (could take a puff, not a steady pressure stream)
-TE probe (swapped between multiple sailplanes) was not seated, thus a leak

Results on both, "What does it sounds like, what does it feel like?"
Fly the frikkin plane, resolve "stupid issues" later on.

Multiple cases yielded a multi hour (not efficient) soaring flight......