On Aug 20, 4:28 pm, Jeremy Zawodny wrote:
wrote:
On Aug 14, 4:11 pm, Greg Arnold wrote:
When buying new, what lead you to get a second DG-1000 rather than
diversifying by getting a Duo Discus?
[snip]
[snip]

I suspect some members would have also resisted getting the Duo
because of the differences in effectiveness of spoilers, worrying if
they might be pilots who get over-reliant on the very effective
DG-1000S spoilers.

There were several strikes against the Duo in our early discussions
about buying the DG-1000 or a Duo. The Duo didn't have back seat gear
control, had a bit less ground clearance, lower spoiler effectiveness,
and no option for aerobatics (not that we really exercise that ability
as often as some thought we might).

And just to be clear, Jeremy is talking about the initial evaluation a
few years ago around wether to purchase a Duo or DG-1000S. And a big
kicker was a very clean used DG-1000S became available and that really
did it. And for our club it was a better choice than a Duo for all the
reasons Jeremy mentions. When it comes to the current time, it is
fleet diversity issues that likely drives any purchase decisions. And
so wether the Duo-X has improved things are pretty much irrelevant for
our next club purchase.

[snip]

Being able to play with all the ballast weights in the tail is nice to
have, but for a club I sometimes think it's an unnecessary complexity...

Especially when the tail ballast box cover falls off in flight. But
blame there is shared between poor design and more importantly poor
preflight inspection -- it happened with me as PIC and Jeremy as my
passenger :-(. Some Duo operators I know do juggle tail water ballast
and once you have the suitable fill gear (e.g. hand pressurized
pesticide sprayer tank) out on the flight line I don't think it is
much hassle (how badly you could get a Duo out of CG range, if at all,
would be interesting to look at. The DG-1000S is pretty benign to tail
ballast box mistakes).

[snip]

Darryl