On Jan 13, 6:54*pm, "noel.wade" wrote:
On Jan 10, 11:19*pm, Derek C wrote:

DG300 and he was OK the second time. I think he must have been caught
out by the general twitchiness in pitch of this type and the unusual
movement of the stick, which was different to what he was used to.

Derek C

Derek -

As a DG-300 owner I'd argue that the ship isn't "twitchy". *However,
the control forces are fairly light (pleasantly so, when you go for an
all-day flight). *Most modern glass ships are like this, and don't
present any particular safety risk. *Side-note: *If you learn on a
Schweizer then EVERY glass ship is going to feel twitchy by
comparison! *:-P

Also - all parallelogram sticks are not created equal. *I disliked the
Zuni II parallelogram stick (put my wrist at an odd angle); but I love
my DG-300 stick. *So much of the ergonomics and control of any
aircraft come down to personal preference, and there's NO substitute
for putting your butt in the seat and trying it out (even if its just
on the ground)!

As for people talking about G-loading affecting the stick force -
here's a little sketch I made for some power-pilots to explain the
problem with a "normal" (pivoting) stick that is offset to the rear:http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo...dCFQ?feat=dire...

Enjoy,



Noel,

Fortunately we don't have any Schweizer gliders in the UK! I don't
know if your DG300 has a nose hook, but the DG300s at our site only
have belly hooks and have a reputation for being a bit twitchy on
aerotow. I can't say that I found them difficult, but then I had quite
a few hours in a Standard Cirrus (ultra-light controls with an all-
flying tailplane) before I first flew one. The pilot who had the PIO
problem had previously aerotowed a Slingsby Sport Vega on a belly hook
with no problem and was fine when checked out on a Grob G103 and a K13
aerotowed on their belly hooks.

Thank you for your diagrams. The issue is that if you pull back on the
stick you will induce positive g, which may cause you to inadvertantly
pull the stick back even further. A sort of runaway situation that
could lead to a loss of pitch control or a PIO.

Derek C