Of tow hooks and wheel brakes

On Sunday, June 9, 2013 4:02:31 PM UTC-6, Don Johnstone wrote:
If you do not have a nosewheel, as in most single seaters fitting a strong brake is really a waste of time and money because you cannot use it. Even the "weak" brakes fitted to gliders such as the discus can only be used with care.

You can not use the breaking power you do not have, but you can modulate the extra breaking power you do have. Better a scraped nose than a busted glider. And having a nose hook also lowers the odds of having to release and use all the braking power.

Having flown tail wheel gliders with too little and with too much power I prefer the one with too much braking power.

Robert Mudd

Another element I have observed is that many pilot wait until the end of the run to try the brakes.

At that point the elevator has no authority to keep the tail down. Better to hold aft stick with braking while you still have control of the pitch, earlier in the ground roll. This allows you to keep the tail down.

I know that with the ships I fly that are "tail draggers" the sooner you get rid of energy the easier the end of the ground roll.

It's a different approach than most pilots seem to use but it works well.

SoaringXCellence wrote, On 6/9/2013 5:14 PM:
Another element I have observed is that many pilot wait until the end
of the run to try the brakes.

At that point the elevator has no authority to keep the tail down.
Better to hold aft stick with braking while you still have control of
the pitch, earlier in the ground roll. This allows you to keep the
tail down.

I know that with the ships I fly that are "tail draggers" the sooner
you get rid of energy the easier the end of the ground roll.

It's a different approach than most pilots seem to use but it works
well.

On my ASW 20 C, I would put the flaps in negative after touching down
and hold the stick back, allowing full braking power with no chance of
going up on the nose. Wait to end, the elevator wasn't very effective at
holding the tail down, reducing the braking force I could apply without
the nose going down - like Xcellence said.

--
Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA (change ".netto" to ".us" to
email me)
- "Transponders in Sailplanes - Feb/2010" also ADS-B, PCAS, Flarm
http://tinyurl.com/yb3xywl

You can not use the breaking power you do not have, but you can modulate the extra breaking power you do have.
That's sure the Truth! I love the G103 hydraulic disc brake! Unfortunately, I fly a Speed Astir most of the time, which uses the same miserable Tost Kobold Wheel the LS3 and 4 use. Stretchy cables aside, I have never seen a Tost Kobold wheel that DIDN'T have cracks in the steel (iron?) brake drum portion of the wheel. The Tost BIMBO wheel is nothing more than a scaled up Kobold. Of course, I have one of those in the Janus.
Vintage Brake can make the drum brakes work well (a fiend's libelle brake is very powerful (after Vintage Brake treatment), even though it's the tiny Lilliput wheel.
The downside is the wait. He runs a 4 month backlog most of the time. I don't know what he can do if the drum has the cracks that are so common.