Fitter 21:
"I think you are being rather unkind".
Not really; I did say that I had only flown XV951 once and that I remembered little about it except that I had written in my log book "dreadful aircraft".
I never ever had anything to do with the Air Cadet movement (apart from getting my "A" and "B" in 1957 with the ATC) but I was afforded the opportunity to fly XV951 in my capacity as CFI of an RAFGSA gliding club. (I was also a long standing training captain in Mrs Windsor's 4-engined transport fleet at the time).
I suppose I was comparing it with the ASK13 and the SZD Bocian (which I loved - particularly for aerobatics). (I never really had a great love for the Blanik).
"Terrible compared to the T-31 that it was supposed to replace"
Now that cannot be a serious comment. I remember Chris Wills (son of Phillip Wills - the great grand father of British gliding) saying to me in the gliding club bar one night in the 1960s:
"The T-31 is not a glider old boy; it is a device" - how very true.
chevvron:
"Adverse yaw"; now that has jangled a bell with me. The controls were not at all well harmonised and you are right, XV951 suffered badly from adverse yaw.
I also remember the clanking from the wings.
tholland53:
None of the above really matters. If YOU are happy with your bit of kit then be happy with your bit of kit. In fairness, you did ask for comments so you must accept what comes next be it good or be it bad.
My good friend DSB who invited me to fly XV951 was an extraordinary flyer of extremely modest proportions. For example, he was on 111 Sqn when they used to loop no less than 22 Hawker Hunters in very close formation, he flew Lightnings, he was the UK glider aerobatic champion and finished up as an L1011 captain. There was not much that DSB did not know about flying machines.
It was he that made the "expensive canopy" comment.
I have already told the story on another thread of the day that Slingsbys arrived at Sutton Bank (a hill site not far from their factory at Kirkbymoorside) with the first T-53 in a trailer. They started rigging it, and, to my and everyone else's astonishment, mounted the tailplane before they had even put a single wing on.
You have already worked out what happened next!
They dropped the fuselage with the tailplane attached with expensive results and that was the end of that for the day. Off they went back to the factory.
Come to think of it, perhaps that is why it suffered so badly from adverse yaw?
How many T-53s were actually completed?