On Sunday, April 5, 2020 at 3:18:21 PM UTC-4, Dan Daly wrote:
On Sunday, April 5, 2020 at 2:42:05 PM UTC-4, Martin Gregorie wrote:
On Sun, 05 Apr 2020 10:40:07 -0700, uneekcowgirl wrote:

For the guys here who are familiar with 1970’s soaring, have any of you
owned an asw-15 and what were your impressions of them?

First off, I've not owned one, have heard two maintenance points
discussed at Milfield, where there were two of them:

- before s/n 356 the wing, like early Libelles, has a glass/balsa/glass
wing skin. The main spar is a box with vertical grain balsa webs, but
the inside of the box is unpainted so, during annuals, its interior
must be inspected for mould

- the aileron pushrods run through nylon bearings which, if greased, can
get clogged with a dust/grease mixture which makes the ailerons stiff..
I'm told its a right ******* to remove without chopping holes in the
wing.

A Danish friend had an early ASW-15 and liked it, though its single tow
hook is offset from the center line and its position is a compromise
between winch and aero tow. The B series fixed that and can carry water..

If you know Karl Striedieck ask him about them: he once owned one and set
out and return distance records with it.


--
Martin | martin at
Gregorie | gregorie dot org

When I was starting flying in the 90's, a club-mate had an ASW-15; there was a tool making the rounds for cleaning the aileron runs of the dried grease. IIRC, you 'bought' it from the previous user, used it, and waited for the next fellow with the problem, and 'sold' it to him for the same price + shipping. Don't know if it is still in circulation. Nice glider. Offset CG hook (we winched) so it yawed at the start of the roll.

And a quick search of the archive: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/rec.aviation.soaring/ASW-15$20aileron$20tool%7Csort:date/rec.aviation.soaring/a84U42BifAQ/RNPME7d2y0MJ which describes the tool etc. Doug passed away of cancer.