At 19:36 03 August 2005, Stefan wrote:

Things I hate about the Duo:

The cockpit is a joke. Despite it's roomy as my saloon,
there's no way
to carry even a simple water bottle without permanently
fearing that it
will slip under the seat and jam some controls. Besides,
I hate the
smell of my co-pilot's feet.

The spoilers are a joke for such a heavy glider. I
have done outlandings
at fields which I wouldn't want to try in a Duo.

I forces me to abandon a good thermal at cloud base,
when the cloud
above indicates that there are still 2000 metres of
good climb, which
would allow me to cross that blue hole in front of
me.

And, probably the most annoying thing: I'm not allowed
to do that
occasional loop, just for fun, during a cross country
flight.

The DG 1000 my club has ordered will be delivered only
next spring, so I
don't know yet what I'll hate about that one. :-)

Stefan


Why carry water in inconvenient bottles in any glider?
For the Duo 2-3 litres of water in a Camelbak fit
fine for me tied horizontally behind the top of the
front seat back. Alternatively for tall front pilots
their water bag can go in the little rucksack in front
of the rear cockpit with a tube to the front. The
rear cockpit pilot can carry his water bag secured
elsewhere such as behind the rear head rest.

Front seat pilot's food and oddments sit nicely in
the deep well under the right thigh that is meant to
hold lead ballast but rarely does so. With that space
there is actually as much oddments room in the front
of a Duo as a solo SH glider. The side pocket is tiny
but you can tuck a surprising amount of stuff into
it.

Also the rear pilot acts as butler when required -
part of the fun of XC in a two seater

The weakness Duo airbrakes is greatly overplayed.
The forces required for full airbrake are excessive
IMHO until you adjust the hydraulic wheelbrake a little
and also make sure the glider has the modified airbrake
lever (in the mid fuselage) to reduce the forces.
Without those changes I was not able to fully open
the brakes without real effort. Then when you can
easily pull full brake you find that you have a glide
angle of 6.7:1. The Discus 2C, which is judged by
reviewers to have powerful airbrakes, gets 6.6:1.
If you can't manage with 6.7:1 to get into a field
then you ought not to be flying XC. The difference
between landing single and two seaters in fields is
the relative lengths of the float and ground run which
is directly proportional to the weights (for the same
approach speed) - except that the Duo has an extremely
powerful wheel brake and it is very difficult to get
a Turbo Duo to go onto its nose so full wheel braking
is available when needed.

If you want to critcise the Duo the one unquestionably
poor feature is the unsprung undercarriage which can
make landings on rough hard ground uncomfortable.
That (and all the other usual Duo moans) is done away
with in the Duo X. BTW when I was at the factory a
few weeks ago I was told that that there were further
developments of the Duo X in the pipeline - specifically,
on the front cockpit to improve storage and also separation
between that and the rear cockpit.

John Galloway