Robert Hart wrote:
I am part of a working party that is looking at, amongst other things,After all the other comments, I'll relate our experiences at Balaklava, where we wrestled with the same question in 94-95. I presented our working party results at the 95 BGC AGM.
options for modernising our club's fleet.
The choices we had at the time were - L23 Blanik, Pukatek, Pooch, IS28 and ASK21. There were a couple of others that were just totally over-the-horizon economically.
We were after was a good all rounder out on the airfield that spent most of its time operational and not in the workshop being maintained for 6 weeks to 2 months every year. Hence, there was a fair concentration on the maintenance aspects of the choices.
Our club's long history with Blaniks was well fixed in our memories. Balak had probably two of the most-winch launched tin cans in the country. We were fortunate over the years of having two very capable metal-men who had acquired a suite of tools to do any major work required. Each of these guys had rebuilt a Blanik from wrecks they acquired. I started assisting in Blanik maintenance not long after I started gliding and at the time we sold the last one had been signing them out for at least 20 years and that included doing survey work, so I know a thing or two about tin cans.
They are very maintenance intensive. It takes a lot of work to keep circuit-bashing tin cans tight. Otherwise they become very loose and rattley. If you have people that enjoy doing it - good but after so many years I had had enough of them. In fact after our last one went out the gate, I got our RTO-A to remove all my metal ratings. Now I can't even DI one of the f .. f ... f .... suckers.
Back in the mid-eighties, we tried a Concrete Swan (Twin Astir - the retractable wheel version) . It was wasn't suited to a winch operation. It was too heavy and the approach speed too fast and the long push back to the take-off slowed down turn around times.
So our choices came down to the Pooch or the K21. We had some reservations about the maintenance aspects of the Pooch while the K21 had been operational for 15 years and did not have a single specific AD attached to it. They still don't.
While the K21 was a big ask of the club economically, it won the day at the AGM discussions. Not all approved and there was some division about the move. However, after a couple of months operation, that division had as good as disappeared. After some 8 years of operating one and a second for nearly 4 years, these kites have been a big benefit to the club. Most of the time in the workshop is TLC. It takes longer to polish them than it takes to do the Form 2.
They remain very, very popular with all who fly them. Of course, the other problem was the lack of spinability at anything other than rearward C of G's. So, with Toby Geiger, the club developed a 'spin kit'. A dolly that fits where wheeled dollies fit but has positions for bolting on various weights to maintain a rear-ward C of G. It can have up to 12kg sitting up the back but you don't even know its there. It doesn't change the spin charactertics and there is no indication of the 'dumb-bell' effect that so concerned some people about hanging weights on the tail. Of course, it was only afterwards that we learnt of a factory option available to accomplish the same thing.
More recently, the K21 life has been extented to 18000hrs, so the grandkids of current young pilots will be flying them.
Expensive - yes. Long term investment - yes. Maintenance drain on the club - never. Flyability - A1.
-- Leigh Bunting Colonel Light Gardens South Australia <Open Windows and let the bugs in>
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