In the war bird community we had hangar flying sessions where we talked about the emergencies we experienced and how we handled them. These were priceless sessions! I learned what other pilots did in situations I had never thought of. So here is my first post about something that taught me a lesson. Hopefully others will share their experiences too. This should be a judgment free thread for learning and sharing.

Here is something that taught me about flying. I had purchased a brand new Ventus 2C (I think it was 2000 or 2001). As part of the options I had the CG adjusted for pilot weight at the factory. When my shinny new glider arrived I was keen to get it in the air. My first big mistake was to trust the factory W&B! I had never flown an aircraft out of the CG range except once when a passenger lied to me about their weight (by 60 Lbs) while flying a helicopter. I ran out of aft stick on landing, not a big event on a paved runway. Anyway back to my story. My plan as always with a new (to me) glider was to take a high tow, do a few turns and stall or two, I was even planning on a spin. Well on tow I noticed my new glider (first and only time I purchased a new glider) was rather pitch sensitive, off tow, it was all I could do to keep it between 45 knots and 75 knots. Fortunately, the day was booming so staying up was not too difficult. I immediately abandoned my plan of some turns, stalls and maybe a spin. I thought the problem was with me as I had not been flying fixed wing aircraft much in the prior two years. I flew for four hours, got a bit better controlling the speed. I entered the pattern about 4,000 AGL and practised flying the pattern keeping my speed to within as small a speed deviation as I could. After landing I thought the problem was with me and possibly the brand as I had heard the first Ventus' were not known to be easy to fly. I thought nothing more than I need a bunch more time in this glider and never even mentioned my speed control problems to my fellow pilots as I was too embarassed. I put about 20 hours on that glider in two months and even had a few notable interesting XC flights. With time I got much better at the speed control (used to fly an all flying tail glider), but I never felt comfortable. Finally I confessed my experiences to another pilot and that I thought somehow I could not fly fixed wing aircraft anymore. Well, this pilot mentioned that it sounded like a CG problem. That had never occurred to me, nor did I have any experience in this area. Looked at the aircraft logbook again and had a W&B done. The logs and W&B calculations done by the factory showed I need 11 lbs of tail weight, the weight from the factory in the tail was 11 kilograms!!! I seem to remember NASA losing a Mars lander with JPL using metric calculations and NASA using English system

What did I learn: 1) Always perform a W&B on a glider that is new to you; 2) Never be shy about admitting your flying problems to fellow pilots; 3) do not plan to perform stalls and spins on the very first flight; 4) do not make excuses for the glider or how it is flying or how you are flying it, tell someone about it!

Maybe someone else could add a few comments about what they would have done and anything else I could learn from this. Also, share your own story so we might all learn.