On Sunday, February 16, 2020 at 4:51:41 PM UTC+13, George Haeh wrote:

1. The manual softpedals how much forward trim you need for takeoff. I ballooned behind a Pawnee, had one bounce correcting. Then discovered not long later the spoilers had come open.

At 170 pounds with chute, I've never had any bouncing or kiting problems with the Junior trimmed for 60 knots during takeoff. In the Junior I fly that is notch 4/10, with 1/10 being full aft trim. YMMV, but I don't think that it is at all fair to suggest that the Junior is prone to PIO on takeoff.


2. There's a pitch down moment pulling spoilers. A definite change for pilots transitioning from an L-23 which has a mild pitch up.

Huh. I mostly trained in L-23 (which I agree has a distinct pitch up when opening spoilers), then took 3 flights in ASK-21 and one in a PW-6. Then I hopped in the Junior and never noticed any pitching problem. Perhaps I had learned from the L-23 the merits of gradually opening spoilers. I don't understand why top of the wing spoilers would cause a pitch down.


3. Short pilots with the setback forward pulling full spoilers must watch against twisting their shoulders and inadvertently pushing the stick forward.


It's easy to get that final aftward movement of the spoiler lever by bending the wrist and pushing with finger tips on the front of the handle from above (without any body twist). Once you learn that, the difficulty of fully opening the spoilers becomes a feature, not a bug. This is because the spoilers are ridiculously effective, maybe twice as effective as the ASK-21 (this might be partly due to the higher sink rate of the Junior at the same pattern speed), so you don't want to accidentally open them full, and there is rarely any need to open full.

One of few times I've opened the spoilers full (for a few seconds) on a Junior was on the same flight that I set the altimeter 1000 low, such that I entered the pattern at 2000. I noticed the problem immediately on downwind and started correcting, but I flew a very steep final. I did not know exactly how high I was, so I snap decided to ignore the 'broken altimeter', and eyeball the landing.

Even though Best Glide in the Junior is at 43 knots (slower than the ASK-21) it has the same handicap as the ASK-21. I guess that is because it climbs so much better than the ASK-21.