I do have a bit of first hand experience with a not connected aileron on a
flapped ship. Notice I am clearly stating that I didn't hook it up, and
not that it came loose. My bad. My very, very bad. I was lucky.

From what I have seen on my flight, and heard of others who have had the
same thing happen, a loose flap or aileron will tend to float up on a
sailplane. So, if you have positive flap selected, you may well get an
uncorrectable roll in the direction of the loose surface. If you ever
find yourself in a flapped ship with full stick one way, and still rolling
the other, get the flaps negative quickly! And if you are near the ground,
be prepared to have to pull the nose up to keep from smiting it!

Knowing what I know now, I would have been able to do better than
releasing at 600 feet and flying a very awkward pattern. My sailplane of
choice for this near incident was a Zuni 2. 90 degree flaps for glide
path control, but a flap drive system that should have given me the best
possible control when I needed it. If I had thought about this sort of
thing before.

Where I could have had the best possible control would have been to
operate the two flap levers together. There is a cruise flap handle, much
like a 301 Libelle handle, and a crank, much like the one in a PIK-20B .The
top handle moves the flaps and ailerons together, and the crank moves just
the flaps. Had I thought about this before, I would have pushed the
cruise flap lever fully forward (getting the ailerons as close to matched
as possible), then pulled on half or a full turn of drag flap, to get the
lift shifted inboard and the nose back down low to have a good view of the
towplane and good stall margin.

A similar scenario could play out with a Schleicher ASW-20, ASW-22,
ASH-25, ASW-27, or ASG-29. On these gliders, larger flap deflections have
the ailerons go back up into the negative settings range. I remember Dick
Butler had a flap or aileron panel come disconnected on his 22 one day at
Hobbs in 1983. He said that with the flaps full negative, the stick was
near the center. At -7 degrees, it took half travel on the stick to keep
it level. Rather than experimenting with positive flaps before landing
(after flying the 330 mile task), he just flew a shallow bank pattern and
landed fast, with the flaps full negative.

To be the safest we can be, we must all know everything we can about the
systems we have at our disposal. How manyof you flapped ship drivers have
tried flying part of a traffic pattern using just the flaps, and not the
elevator? I have tried it at altitude to see the ship's response, but
have not been so bold as to try it down between 600 and 1000 feet where
there can be much more turbulence and much less time to recover. I just
hope I never have to.

Steve Leonard
Wichita, KS