negative flaps--what speeds?

At 18:36 24 July 2003, 303pilot wrote:
The manual for my 303 Mosquito is silent as to when
the use of negative
Hi Brent

I am a Mosquito owner.
I have found that normal thermalling is best done at
around the 45-50kt range with +1 flap. I have flown
in weak wave where at around 50knots the glider was
sinking and putting the flaps up to 0 enabled the glider
to climb. The drag is obviously less in the higher
(up) flap setting

When cruising I put the flaps in whatever position
feels comfortable with little reference to the ASI,
other than to monitor the chosen cruise speed. The
way to do this is quite simple, once you start to increase
speed move the flap lever into the free position and
without letting go, let it float. You will find that
it adopts a set position which can be felt, for a given
speed, then you can drop it into the closest notch.
After a while this becomes automatic.

Two other simple techniques are

1. When leaving a thermal put the flaps right up
before you accelerate, on some gliders like the ASW20
putting the flaps up causes a quite marked speed increase,
the Mosquito is not quite so marked and need a little
help from the stick. One you have reached your chosen
cruise speed you can then reset the flaps as required.

2. Only put the flaps down when you have slowed after
your pull up into the next thermal.

This means you are accelerating and decelerating with
minimum drag and do not have to worry about the speed
settings as you speed up and slow down.

Landing the Mosquito is a whole new ball game!! The
was a thread running a few months ago on this subject.

Hope this helps

Dave Martin