Fun with trailling edge dive brakes

Scott,
I flew a Ventus B for a while that had trailing edge dive brakes and I
know what you are talking about. You have to be extremely careful to
keep your airspeed up since the divebrakes are so effective, and
therefore that makes short field landings something that you must
practice. My gliderport has powerlines at both ends of the runway so
my final approaches were typically about 3 times higher than my
clubmates who were flying ships with spoilers. My first landings were
a bit bouncy because I was touching down with more than adequate
flying speed, but after time I was able to make smooth landings,
although not as short as I would have liked. One of the posts above
mentions pulling everything out at the flare. I tend to agree with
that approach except if you are higher than you expected on final and
then you would simply pull everything out a bit sooner. On my ship
you could not meter the dive brakes; they were either on or off,
therefore your patterns and airspeed control required more attention
to ensure that you didn't over or undershoot your touch down, hence my
tendency to come in high and make fast approaches.
My advice is to first simply get used to making smooth landings and
not worrying about how much runway you use. In calm air I was making
my approaches at about 65 knots; faster if there was any kind of wind.
This is probably somewhat faster than recommended, but I'm paranoid
about stall/spin accidents and the need for speed control for trailing
edge divebrake equiped ships. If you hold off just a foot or two
above the ground and let the speed bleed off then you won't bounce
after touching. Once you have your landings down using this
technique, then you can start slowing your approach just a little bit
at a time. You will find that your rollout shortens significantly as
your approach speed is lowered.
I can't stress enough though how important it is to keep an eye on
your airspeed and ensure that you maintain a safe velocity. Trailing
edge dive brakes are phenominal once you finese the technique but
don't feel that you are odd man out if it takes a lot of landings to
figure out how to do them.
Best of luck.



(Scott Elhardt) wrote in message . com...
I've been happily flying my H303 Mosquito for a year now and my
landings seem to be getting worse as time goes on. I have tried a lot
of approaches to the process, but inevitably I'm faster that I want to
be and don't touch as lightly as I'd like especially with a lot of
brake out.

Any trailing edge dive brake experts care to describe your accumulated
perspectives?

Scott