Originally Posted by henry crun
We had a Dagling in the club at Andover many moons ago.
On good thermal days when everything else was staying up we would drag it out and have spot landing competitions.
It would barely make 600ft on the winch, and then it would only just make it back to the launch point !
Good fun on a nice summers day, no instruments, so one judged the speed by the feel of the wind on the face and comparing the undersurface of the wing to the horizon to asssess the angle of attack.
Quite agree with you Henry. Don't know what the fuss is about. I did an aerotow behind a Chipmunk from Cranwell North around 1961/2 and from 2000ft over the field into wind you could actually do a full 360 deg circuit - albeit you needed to keep it tight. Hanna Reitch and Ann Welch to name but two exponents of the type would turn in their graves at some of the comments here.