Derek, who each month is featuring a sailplane which has given him some interesting flying, writes about the Janus C. He says that despite its shortcomings as a basic trainer it was a lovely glider to fly.

The Janus A was an 18 metre span, all glass-fibre machine with an all moving stabiliser. Apart from the very light elevator forces common to almost all the gliders using an all moving stabiliser, it had excellent handling with a good rate of roll and effective rudder. Later production models and the Janus C had a normal fixed stabiliser and elevator to improve the longitudinal stability and increase the stick forces. With the object of providing a significant improvement in the performance, the wingspan for the Janus C was increase from 18 to 20 metres. In addition, the wings and the tailplane were further lightened and stiffened by using carbon fibre construction. As is often the case with "stretched" gliders, the Janus C showed signs of being short of fin and rudder, but this did not seem too much of a price to pay for the greatly improved performance. It had performance flaps with the ailerons moving in harmony to vary the wing camber proportionally over the complete span to keep close to the ideal elliptical lift distribution at both high and low speeds. The Janus C taken by Neil Lawson of the White Planes Picture Company. The Schempp-Hirth type airbrakes were on the top surface of the wing only to minimise loses through air leakage between the raise pressure air below the wing and the reduce pressure above it. When used in conjunction with the flaps for landing they were reasonably effective and, although fitted, the tail parachute was seldom needed. All in all this was a very up to date machine and fitted our requirement for an advanced, cross-country trainer for club use and as a stepping stone for a pilot moving on to a flapped single-seater for the first time. I will always remember my first impressions of the Janus. It was by far the best performing two-seater I had ever flown and at the time, very competitive with many of the Open Class machines. It is only now after nearly 20 years or more that significantly better performing two-seaters are in production. I was to make very many interesting cross-country flights in the Lasham Janus and flew it a number of times in local contests. However, the handling demanded a little more respect than most other gliders and it was not an easy machine for an inexperienced pilot to manage. My first introduction to its foibles was while checking out one of my experienced instructors. Playing it safe, as he thought, by coming on to the base leg with several hundred feet to spare, he lowered the landing flap, opened the airbrakes and then, realising he would land rather far down the landing area, said to me, "Oh well I'll just need to use a s