Hanger Flying/ I learned from this experience

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.