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Gerhard Waibel, a leading member
of the Akaflieg Darmstadt group who helped design, build and fly the famous
D36 and who had joined Kaiser as a designer at Schleichers, made an all
out effort to make his ASW-12 a world beater.
By eliminating the airbrakes and giving it full span flaps, he was out
to remove every possible source of unnecessary drag. A tail parachute
was the only landing aid apart from the flaps. It was an instant success
and soon took many of the world records. W. Scott of the USA made a goal
flight record of 600 miles and later Hans Werner Grosse flew a straight
line distance record of 907.7miles. The 1970 World Championships were
dominated by ASW-12s with them taking five of the first nine places.
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The handling in the air was simple and excellent, but the lack
of airbrakes made it a skilled job to put down in fields. Like many
"ultimate" performance machines it required an experienced
pilot to operate it safely. I imagine almost everyone who flew them
has a tale to tell about one or more of their off field landings.
There are no half measures with a tail drag 'chute, Once deployed
there is no way of reducing its effect apart from jettisoning it.
Should the tail parachute fail to open, the pilot is faced with
a real problem of how to make it come down in anything of less size
than an airfield. As a result even in major contests it was not
uncommon for pilots to turn back and make airfield landings rather
than risk flying on and face ending up in a farmer's field.
However, I will remember the ASW-12 as a beauty which taught me
a few lessons about test flying and exploring new machines. It was
the first sailplane I had flown with a tail parachute as the only
drag producing device to spoil the glide.
Since then I have used tail parachutes many times and found they
are seldom 100% reliable, even if they are packed correctly and
dried out before each day's flying. For some reason they seem to
fail to open occasionally in spite of every care being taken.
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The first flight was just to assess the general handling and it was obvious
that the performance was outstanding for its day. (The prototype's maiden
flight was in December 1965.) I made the usual stalls and incipient spins,
checked the rate of roll and the sideslipping characteristics and ran
it up to about 100kts.
If I remember correctly the flaps could only be lowered to about 30 degrees
and they had very little effect on the glide, apart from the nose down
change of attitude needed to maintain speed. Very aware of the lack of
airbrakes, as there was very little wind, I gave myself a good< |
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