On Friday, March 13, 2015 at 9:20:27 PM UTC+13, Surge wrote:
On Friday, 13 March 2015 08:10:53 UTC+2, Bruce Hoult wrote:
I definitely would recommend you to find an early model Janus and do a few dual flights in it before flying the Nimbus (preferably before deciding to buy it), even if you have to travel to do so.

Thanks, that's an excellent suggestion and a privately owned Janus (first one built) is located at the club I fly at.

By the way, we tried the tail chute on our Janus a few times and then disabled it.

The airbrakes are not all that strong (neither are those in the Duo Discus!), but landing flap plus airbrake together are as effective as the brakes in most other gliders. Plus add in side slip and you've got a massively steep descent. You don't want to do that all the way to the ground, but it will get you down to a normal approach angle and then I'd say recover from the slip by 100 or 150 ft.

I don't think the parachute offers anything more than do the other tools at your disposal -- tools which you can apply and take off repeatedly if necessary.

I don't know how similar the Nimbus is in that regard. I'd suspect pretty similar, but I don't know for sure.