Club Glider Hangar?

Similarly, landing on a hard (tar) runway with the wheel locked will give the
pilot the opportunity to purchase one of those expensive white stripes.

On many single seaters if the pilot lets the nose touch the tar no amount of
back on the stick is going to help till there is a significant amount of speed
and gell coat reduction.

Martin Gregorie wrote:
Cats wrote:
On Jan 11, 1:33 pm, Martin Gregorie
wrote:
snip
There are or were about 4 Juniors in the USA. Williams Soaring had one
in which I flew in 2001. It was the nicest Junior I've seen: in
excellent condition and retro-fitted with a hydraulic brake which
actually worked without binding. The brake activation was by applying
full air brake rather than the usual lever on the front of the air brake
handle.

That would be nice. Wish my glider could have that!

You've got the brake lever on the stick same as a Libelle, haven't you?

That works for me. The one snag with the air brake deployment with a
tail dragger is when you're going for a short field landing on wet
grass. If the wheel is locked when you touch down a variety of
interesting things might happen including but not limited to sliding
into the far hedge. One of our Discii nearly got totaled in similar
circumstances - very wet field, pilot landing toward hard things, hit
the brake and locked up the wheel which caused it to aquaplane.

The Williams Junior was operated off a hard runway, so this wasn't an
issue. In any case, as I'm sure you know, standard Junior brakes are
digital - either they don't work at all or they drag when off and stand
it on its nose when used. The brake lever on air brake handle is a bit
awkward too. Not that this bothers me - I think I've used them about
twice in well over 50 landings: properly held off they don't run far at
all.

Mainly it was nice to fly a Junior with a good, progressive wheel brake.

Bob Whelan wrote:
The anal part of me occasionally would like to know exactly how many
times I've heard the following 2 positions (usually in opposition to
some sort of proposed fleet change in a club) espoused (with varying
degrees of vehemence):
1) flaps (not the landing kind, merely the camber-changing efficiency
kind) are definitionally 'too complex' to even be considered as a new
club ship, and...
2) ditto retractable landing gear.

Related comment.

Today I was chatting with a pretty experienced instructor who has
specialized in air experience and early instruction of young people
(Scouts, etc) in a variety of aircraft: Rotax Falke, DG-500T, Blanik
L-13. We were discussing the L-13, which I've never flown, and he was
saying that both its retract gear, which you can safely land on when its
up, and its flaps, which he thought were pretty ineffective, are made
the way they are and fitted specifically to give student pilots
experience flying a glider with retracts and flaps.

One solution would seem to be to use an L-13 or L-23 for pre-conversion
training.

From my experience of converting to an ASW-20 (read the POH a few
times, get in and take an aero tow), I'd have appreciated a flight or
two in an L-13 or DG500/22 first. My club doesn't own any flapped duals
and the only private ones on site are big-wings.


--
martin@ | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
org |

In our club there is also the "holy flapped cow" - a Mini-Nimbus.

I myself found the transition from the LS1-c to the Mini-Nimbus to be more or
less a non-issue. First takeoff was using the winch and i loved the glider from
the first circle onwards...

Now they require you to:
- get checked out on the JanusB of our neighbours club
- get at least 3 solo flights with the Janus

IMHO that is total crap.
A Janus has nothing in common with a Mini-Nimbus...
One is a big ugly MoFo :-) the other a nice little racer.

Flaps are IMHO just a different kind of trim - use them and be happy!
(Same goes for the other flapped ships i have flown - of which i only rate the
ASH25 as a glider that needs you to train a bit to uses it good - DG500, ASW20
etc were all nice and easy to fly).

just my 2cents
Greetings
Markus

Markus Gayda wrote:

Flaps are IMHO just a different kind of trim - use them and be happy!
(Same goes for the other flapped ships i have flown - of which i only
rate the ASH25 as a glider that needs you to train a bit to uses it good
- DG500, ASW20 etc were all nice and easy to fly).

I'd agree that the '20 was fairly easy to fly, but there was still the
big gulp over the flap change midway through the ground roll and that
first flapped landing. Some previous flap experience in a dual would
have reduced the size of that gulp.

I certainly got launches and landings nailed quite a while before I
mastered the "always in the right flap without thinking about it" trick.


--
martin@ | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
org |