Your take off technique sounds pretty standard Paul. At max weight (135
liters of water in my case) a wing drop can be an issue. The '55 sits tail
down with a large angle of attack. The ailerons are not very effective
until you get the tail up and reduce that angle. If you have a cross wind
or quartering tail wind (the worst!!) you need to keep the tail wheel on the
ground for the early ground roll. So it's a fine balance. I have never
been able to fly it with full tanks so I can't comment on it's behaviour in
this case.

I take your point about the wing weight. A friend of mine bought a '55 for
that reason so he and his wife (small lady) could rig and de-rig without
assistance. I had a 201b Libelle for many years and describe the '55 as a
Libelle on steroids!

All gliders need to be flown faster in thermals when carrying water ballast.
From memory the '55 liked another 5 to 8 knots or so. But it handled the
weight well and never caused me a problem in that regard.

Tom



"Paul B" wrote in message
...

Hi Tom and Bill

I am also flying 55, and I have some 600 hours in it. I am like Tom, at max
cockpit weight. I seldom fly with water and if so only partially full. With
or without water I tend not to drop wings though. I take off with partial
airbrake, full forward trim and stick on the front stop. I do not finesse
the ailerons, they go from stop to stop. On the occasion that I have dropped
the wing, as Tom said, everything in the opposite corner brings it up. It
has never happened to me with water, so I cannot comment.

Interestingly I am keeping mine to get old, I can still lift the wing at the
root with one hand, and I cannot do that with any other glider wing that I
am familiar with.

I find the comments about flying with max all up weight intriguing, as I
think that I thermal quite poorly(read fast) with water on board (all up 440
kg). Not sure if it is me or the glider.

I would appreciate any comments on the above.

Thanks

Paul

On Monday, 15 February 2016 06:47:54 UTC+10, Tom & Jane Gilbert wrote:
Hi Bill. At that time (12 years ago!!) I was looking for ways to tame the
take off habits of my '55. Because of my weight (max cockpit) I had to
fly
with partial ballast only. Filling it would greatly exceed max all up
weight. Because of the long skinny tanks the partial water load would
move
when the wing dropped on take off... something it almost always did unless
I
had a very athletic wing runner. So every take off was an adventure and
very entertaining to the onlookers. Having said that I never actually
lost
it on take off. But wing down, everything in the opposite corner for an
extended period was not comfortable.

I sold my '55 a few years back. I loved it in the air and it was a rocket
at max weight. It held the Australian 300k out and return for a while at
147kph. I sold it because I considered it to be not the best glider to
grow
old in. The new owner (much younger than me) loves it. I now fly a
DG-400... much more in keeping with my aging abilities!!

Best regards,

Tom Gilbert



wrote in message
...

On Monday, October 13, 2003 at 1:29:23 PM UTC-8, Tom and Jane Gilbert
wrote:
Any 55 owners fitted winglets to their ships? Thoughts... comments??

Tom Gilbert

I have SN 39, modified with Nelson winglets which look a lot like ASW 27
winglets, and I
suspect are more effective than the LS-8 bent up tips. Compared to my
recollections of another
'55 that I owned (SN 29) low speed roll control is improved-- which helps
with partial
ballast take offs.

On the subject of how much water to put in, Jerzy Szemplinski once told me
about the '55:

"Bill, you fill it. You always fill it!"