On Mon, 05 Jul 2004 01:45:52 GMT, Marc Ramsey
wrote:

Ventus B wrote:
I have been considering buying an ASW20, ASW20B, or ASW20C. I knew
they were champions in their day and still have a lot of admirers.
However a few folks from my club say they have some nasty spin
characteristics. Specifically, that they have a tendancy to not only
immediately spin when stalled, but will go inverted as they spin. Can
anyone eloborate or corroborate? I normally only hear good things
about the 20.

Some (but not all) of the earlier 20 (aka 20A) ships
are reputedly somewhat less forgiving. Get too slow, and they will
stall and spin rather promptly, with very little warning. I've never
experienced going inverted in a spin, but they will do over the top spin
entries (outside wing drops, and the glider rolls inverted before
settling into a normal spin), which confuses those who haven't
experienced them before.

I'll second that. I have an early '20 (s/n 34) and it does indeed
depart with little warning if I get too slow in a 45+ degree bank (45
kts in zero flap and a gust will do it) but both times I've got it
back within a 1/4 turn and not much height loss. One departure
happened when I gradually tightened the turn past 45 degrees while
keeping the speed to a constant 45 kts, so I guess that's expected
with hindsight. The second was in a more turbulent thermal, so may
have been helped along by a gust.

It does drop a wing when stalled (any flap setting) but that's pretty
benign and not hard to deal with. I would not describe that as a spin
from stall, though it might develop into one if left alone. Standard
spin recovery is: (a) centralise controls, (b) flaps negative, (c)
take normal spin recovery action. So far (c) has not been necessary as
it usually self recovers when the flaps are pushed negative.

I've not yet seen a departure which went past a 90 degree bank.

Other habits:

- trimmed hands off at 50 kts and with feet on to keep straight, mine
has a 25 second phugoid with a +/- 5 kt speed excursion. I let it run
for 5-6 cycles but the amount of the speed excursion seemed stable
after the first couple of cycles.

- trimmed hands and feet off at 50 kts is stable. If the wheel is
dropped or the brakes opened a spiral dive develops - there seems to
be no benign spiral.

I'm very pleased with mine and glad I bought it. It thermals well, is
nicely balanced to fly and has an excellent turn of speed in the
cruise. The learning curve for the flapped life is steep but worth the
effort - its taken me 37 hours over 36 flights (almost all off the
winch) to feel as if I'm up to speed with the flaps but I felt at home
in the glider almost from the start. Mind you, I did have over 150
hours in a Pegase, which I really rate, first!.

FWIW I had 226 solo hours (271 total) when I made my first flight in
the '20 and would not have wanted to tackle it a year earlier (134
hours solo, 174 total) though at that time I would have been happy to
fly almost any 15m standard class glider.

--
martin@ : Martin Gregorie
gregorie : Harlow, UK
demon :
co : Zappa fan & glider pilot
uk :