On Fri, 01 Sep 2017 03:56:33 -0700, charlesethridge wrote:

Hi, all.

I have a PW-5 that I bought but have never flown. Since the PW-6 is the
2-place trainer for the PW-5, I was hoping to train in a PW-6 for and
hour or so before attempting the PW-5.

Its a while since I flew a PW-5, but that was directly after stepping out
of a Twin Astir and was not a problem. I have only aero-towed in one: I
have no idea about PW-5 behaviour on a winch or other ground launch.

The one issue I was warned about was PIO on aero-tow take-off: this can
be an issue because the PW-5 has a rather light wing loading and a
relatively short spacing between nose and main wheels. If you raise the
nose too far and too soon the PW-5 can pop off the ground quite suddenly
and over-correction can drop it back onto the ground equally suddenly,
which is where the short wheelbase is likely to provoke a PIO.

That said, it wasn't an issue because I'd been warned. I raised the nose
a small amount as soon as the elevator became effective, just as I would
with a G103, ASK-21, Puchacz or any other nose-wheel glider, and let it
run on its main wheel until it lifted off quite nicely as the speed built
up. Once off the ground and flying behind the tug during its ground run,
it was happy to sit there until the tug took off.

A practise run in any nose-wheel training glider would be a good idea if
you normally fly tail-wheel gliders.


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martin@ | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
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