Dolphin flying

Years ago I talked to Wil Schuemann about the system he installed in his modified ASW 12. The stick had a detent for the center position and he used it primarily for aileron control. Pitch control was almost exclusively using the flap lever except for takeoff, tow, landing, etc.

I didn't install a detent in my LS-3 but because my glider had no detents in the flap drive as it came from the factory, I started using the flaps somewhat as Wil did. As he had assured me, it was a wonderfully smooth way to fly. Pull ups were slower than I wanted in those days of dramatic zoomies so I would "help" the process along with a quick pull on the stick as I entered a thermal at cruising speed. But at the top, instead of pushing over, I'd use the flap lever to bring the nose down smoothly, than bank and snap the flaps down for thermaling. I used the stick normally to thermal because the airplane reacted faster although I wonder now if I could have benefited there, too. When I was ready to exit, I'd use the flaps to lower the nose and accelerate.

The caveat was that this worked best if the glider was set up so the stick was in the same position for slow and higher speed flight. At Wil's advice, I measured the distance between the instrument panel and the top of the stick in straight flight at min sink and again at cruising speed (defined as the lowest speed for which I would use full negative flaps) and found that with my aft CG position, it was spot on.

I'm not saying this is the best way to fly. But it might be worth experimenting with. One caution as a layman: be careful about getting too slow with the flaps in negative position. The fuselage will be rather nose high and if you were to lower the flaps quickly, the angle of attack would increase just as quickly. If you stall in that position, the wing wake could be higher than the tail, which is a nasty prescription for "deep stall." I know a pilot who apparently did just this, entered what sounded like deep stall (stable, uncontrollable, nose-high, very high rate of descent, with no ability to lower the nose) and was lucky to escape about the time he was thinking about bailing out.

Chip Bearden