I have come across an ASW 20 which was quite limited by max landing weight,
mainly due to assorted optional equipment

as 15lbs seems a lot for a fuz a repair

The larger rudder may well have quite a bit of mass balance lead on the
leading edge, so it would be worth checking the rudder mass balance, and
considering if it could be stripped and refinished lighter to reduce the
mass balance, a few oz of finish could equall a pound of mass balance

if the previous owners "optimised " the C of G there may be a lump of
lead behind the rudder, in the tail wheel box, at the top of the fin, or
heavy tailwheel.

so it may well be worth taking the rudder off

oxgen bottle?

although max dry(landing)wt is lower down the priority list than any
weight limits that are significant in flight, if you realy dont need it,
might be worth stripping out the waterballast kit

if you look on the BGA web site, gliding.co.uk under
airworthiness/datasheets, there might be some useful hints there.

Pete


At 21:00 29 October 2008, Jon Marshall wrote:
At 20:42 29 October 2008, JJ Sinclair wrote:
John,
Recommend you get a new W&B with you in the cockpit. Some ships fly
quite well behind the aft limit (Nimbus-3), but the concern would be;
How well do they recover from a spin with an aft GC? Your removing
factory weight from the nose and known added aft weight (rudder) would
leave me nervous.
JJ

wrote:
On Oct 29, 3:35=EF=BF=BDpm, wrote:

My calculations give a minimum pilot weight of 243 lbs, and simple
math puts the max pilot at 253. =EF=BF=BDI'll fully calculate the
range=
when I
get to my papers.

Found some figures.
CoG range is 11.5 - 14.76" aft of datum (leading edge at root)
Main wheel weight, 633 # at 2.5" aft
Tail wheel weight, 104# at 165.5" aft
Pilot sits at 17.2" forward

Plug it into the formula, gives min pilot of 247.7# and a max pilot
of
359.5# (but I'm limited to 253# due to gross dry weight). Of
course,
I might be having an off day with the calculator (or messing up my
physics); my memory keeps nagging that it's 243 minimum from the W&B
pictures and formulae.

My test pilot at 200# gives a CoG of 16.39" aft... 1.63" beyond the
max aft allowable. Yet, the ship flew beautifully.

Very odd, I think.

Regards,
John

John are you weighing the glider correctly?
eg tail boom should be at a certain angle, from POH
are you also measuring the distances carefully using the tail boom at
the
correct angle and also using a plumb bob.

Errors in these figures will give a marked difference

jon