Saturday was a great day. We did a number of Intro flights and check rides in the L-23. Herb Weiss had his first flight in the 126. He was so delighted, we all thought he had a winning lottery ticket. Ritts towed an ultra light ( Carbon Dragon ) from the Bird Dog. He had to stand the Tow Plane on its tail to keep the speed down. On Sunday, Dezi put on a pretty good air show with Bill Maxwell's wife in the front seat of the L-23. Jim Kowalski got his "B" badge and had his first flight in the 126. Our students are moving along , and I think we have picked up a few new members in the last couple of weeks.
Tom Matthews
Sunday, August 6th, was a good day for student training and solo flight. But, where were the students?
The 2-33 spent part of the day on the ground!
Dave Zlotek
Well on Saturday I finally got checked out in the new Blanik by Tom Matthews. It was as good as everyone has said. Smooth and responsive. And the visibility is spectacular. At first I thought the controls were a bit stiff. But that is only because the linkages are all nice and new with no play. Nice. Well anyway, every time that I found some lift Tom would tell me to turn a certain way and we would lose it. Just kidding, it was the other way around. I have ridden with Tom a number of times and he is a good instructor. Calm cool and collected and he puts you at ease so that you can concentrate on learning. Just do not pay any attention to what he says. Not with respect to instructing, just the other stuff. Thanks Tom.
I arrived kinda late on Sunday. The sitting club was pretty much just sitting. It is almost dark and starting to sprinkle. I am frustrated. So I said to Ritts. How would you like to go and do some spins and loops? He has about had it, late as it is, looks at his watch and says. OK if you want to. Very accommodating person. So we went to 5000, release and Ritts says. Tell me what you want to do. Lets try a one turn spin to the left, I say. I get in it okay, stop turning ok and then pop the stick forward like in J3's. Holy crap do we pick up speed. The Blanik is a little cleaner than the J3 Cub, I tell ya. If you did not put the stick forward on the J3 it probably would not accelerate enough to get out of the spin. It used to be a joke that if you panicked and put the stick under the instrument panel you might just not get it out. Ritts says don't put the stick forward. Let me show you one. So he demonstrates a perfect one. So I try another one to the left. Much better. Then one to the right. Better. Because I am doing what Ritts says. Easing the stick forward when it is time. Now I say I want to try a loop. Asks me if I have ever done one. I say no. Just rode through a couple with Jim. So he demonstrates a perfect loop. Then I try one. Did not do too bad. I liked it. Getting kind of low so we head in. Now he says. Let's entertain the guys on the ground and do a split S. So Ritts does a perfect split S. And I want to tell you that was one great thrill. I was beginning to see the trees getting what I imagined as pretty close. Then we zoomed up and came in for, what did you expect, a perfect landing. What a pilot, and what a great instructor. Just explains things in a clear and calm manner so that you do not feel like a complete idiot. It was a great experience. Thank you, Ritts.
Ken Woodard
I had a nice flight in Arizona in the new toy. The temperatures maxed out at 114 and I managed to get the LS-6b rigged before the worst of the heat and got an early start to escape the heat. This was not a good idea as I circled around at under 1000' agl for a half hour before finally having to land and get back to the end of the line. The second attempt went much better (probably due to a 2000' foot tow) and I soon connected to some good solid thermals to get me above 6000' and to cooler air. I hooked up with a Glasfluegel 304 pilot who was new to the area and convinced him to join me for a jaunt out west - he had neither a sectional nor a working electrics system but that didn't stop him. Over Wickenburg we got to 12000'msl and the next stop was Forepaugh (about 50 miles from home) when we got a worried call from the Turf towpilot telling us about T-cells building close to the gliderport. We opted to race back home and I must admit it was wonderful to reflex the flaps and cruise at 120knots (over 150kts groundspeed) back without having to point the nose down to the ground! At the time I didn't know that MM was flying without GPS/Sectional so I lost him and it turns out that he was only 30 degrees or so off course and managed to get his bearing before hitting the ground! At 6 miles from Turf I circled in a very powerful 10 knot thermal - the rain was still 10 miles away and it didn't look like it was coming any closer. Within a couple of minutes I was on 02 at 14000' in heavy rain/sleet and intermingled hail at cloudbase and the reports from the ground told me to hurry up and land. I put the flaps to landing position, dropped the gear and pulled full spoilers (don't know if that is the fastest way to get down) and circled tightly in an area of sink and managed to get over 30kts down according to my flight computer. I touched down a couple of minutes behind MM and we managed to get the ships pulled apart and trailered just as the gust front hit and brought the visibility down to about 20 feet!
-Arnd.
First Flight
Roland is the proud new owner of PW-5 3K. Early afternoon on Saturday as Roland and myself were wrapping up the transaction I was getting antsy because the Cu's were popping. It was almost 4 o'clock by the time I took the first tow in my "new" ASW-20. I climbed awkwardly at first to cloudbase and then spent some time investigating stall behavior at various flap settings and then climbing up again. Going North I topped out in a thermal near 6000 feet just South of Pepperel and headed upwind to Brookline. Turning Brookline at 4700 feet, I made a straight glide for the 19 miles back to Sterling and arrived with 2300 feet. Awesome! I climbed back up and tried some high speed flying in the negative flap settings. Unbelievable! After over 2 hours of flying I decided to start the process of learning how to use the flaps and spoilers to my advantage on landing.
A student again
I solicited advice from the most experienced '20 pilots I could find. The ASW-20 is somewhat unique in that it has both spoilers and flaps that can deflect as much as 90 degrees. In the right hands this ship can approach very steeply over obstacles and land extremely short. Speed control is critical and each flap setting has its own correct speed. Too fast and you bounce, too slow and you drop it in, however in the landing flap settings too slow is very slow indeed. For my first landing on Saturday, I set the flaps in thermaling position and made a very good landing. I took a pattern tow right after that and tried the lesser of the two landing flap settings which is over 40 degrees. It turns out I touched the wheel down a tad hot for that setting and bounced. No big deal but not what I wanted. On Sunday I took five more pattern tows and made some good landings and some not so good ones. After every landing somebody would ask me "was that full landing flap"? No not yet...
Mark Koepper ASW-20 MK