COMBAT AND COMPETITION.pdf - Lakes Gliding Club

CHAPTER FOURTEEN OLD WAR HORSES
plying Anne and myself with strawberry sekt, and we discovered too
late that it was lethal!
Regrettably for Herr Waibel his efforts were to no avail. Tony and
I had already flown the ASW-15 which belonged to the RAFGSA 8 .
After our visit to Rolladen Schneider it seemed almost certain that we
would opt for the LS-1, and Tony decided to give Schleichers a miss.
But there had been further modifications to the ASW-15 demonstrator,
and I was determined to check them out before we made our final
decision.
When it came to the point, they were not sufficient to affect the
outcome. The all moving tailplane had been moved higher, so that it
entered the downwash - "warning the pilot" - Waibel said -"if he
attempted to thermal at too low an airspeed." It seemed a strange idea.
In any case, who wants an effect which can best be described as 'stick
fixed hunting in pitch.' The static longitudinal stability and stick force
per 'G', excessive on the RAFGSA machine, had been remedied. But
the handling was still inferior to the LS-1 or the Libelle. The
airbrakes, Schempp type upper and lower paddles, were first class with
a really useful sideslip to back them up. The ASW-15 had the best
field landing capability of all and, for that reason alone, I was sorry to
cross it off the list.
I flew the Standard Cirrus on another visit to Germany. A high tow
from Hahnweide9 , in the gloom of an anticyclonic October day, with
the pepperpot outlines of the castle of Teck shrouded in mist. But the
handling was uninspiring and the airbrakes, once again, were not
effective.
So Tony and I went back to Walter Schneider, and pressed him for
early delivery of an LS-lc with the new long span Schempp type
airbrakes. We were lucky on both counts. Our LS-1 arrived in time to
make its debut, at 'Euroglide', in May the following year - and the
airbrakes were every bit as good as Herr Lemke had promised.
The extra performance soon put a further 460 kms under my belt.
It should have been 500 km, but conditions deteriorated sharply
approaching the second turning point. On the first leg, over the
Cotswolds, I shared a thermal with Frank Pozerskis who was on a
flight from Dunstable in his Cirrus. Frank is a character. In his native
Lithuania he had even contrived to build his own glider during the
German occupation.
Later, destitute, a displaced person outside the gates of Hahnweide,
he watched longingly as the first postwar Schempp Hirth sailplanes
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