darryl ramm’s blog

I have wanted to try flying a large wingspan open class glider for a while and now that the Williams Soaring Center has an ASH-25 “25H” available for rent I had to try it out. ASH-25s can have different wing tip/winglet options, and 25H as I flew it has a wingspan of 25.6 m. That’s 84 feet, or about three quarters of the wingspan of a Boeing 737 jet. The ASH-25 has an about a 60:1 glide ratio. For the mental arithmetic impaired, that means a theoretical glide range of about 110 miles from a height of 10,000 feet.

I flew with Kenny Price the instructor at Williams Soaring Center. Kenny has lots of time instructing and mentoring in ASH-25s. I really just wanted to see what flying such a large glider felt like and we only had time for two flights but I got the bug flying it so I’ll finish doing the rest of a checkout with Kenny as I get time.

The undercarriage in the ASH-25 is only lockable from the front seat. The rear seat passenger/pilot can assist moving the heavy gear with their undercarriage lever, this is similar as the original Duo Discus, something fixed in the Duo Discus X and XL.

The front seat is very comfortable, and high off the ground. You are sitting fairly reclined with a great view because of the low cut canopy rail. This reminded me of my DG-303 glider cockpit. The elevator trim indicator is on the right side of the cockpit, where in my ASH-26E it is on the left side, so I was always looking in the wrong place for the trim indicator.

It turns out this is the only glider I’ve flow with a CG tow hook, I’ve just been lucky and all other gliders I’ve flown have had a nose hook. Two reminders from Kenny to remember to pick up any dropped wing (should it occur) with rudder and not to let the glider balloon. With all that wing on the glider, pilots new to the ASH-25 apparently often have problems with it ballooning up behind the towplane as it starts to fly. I was probably overly worried about this and held the glider down too long on the first take off. Once I relaxed things got better quickly. On the second take off off it did drop the left wing a little and some right rudder brought it up.

The ASH-25 definitely feels like a big bird on tow and you realize that you don’t want to try to over-control it, just let it float around a little more than I would with smaller gliders.

With all that wing the glider wants leading a turn with a lot of rudder but once up in a steep turn it feels remarkably manoeuvrable. Some pilots still use the technique needed with early open class gliders of using abrupt opposite aileron to induce adverse aileron yaw in the direction of the turn and then use rudder and reversing the aileron to the direction of the turn. It did not feel necessary to do this, the glider just wants the turn anticipated by a few seconds with the application of a fair amount of rudder.

The glider gave lots of stall warning, with distinct tailplane rumble and very little tendency to drop a wing.

The spoilers are just not that large for such a large wing and don’t feel that effective, giving maybe 200 fpm descent (with thermalling flaps) at approach speed, but coupled with effective landing flaps will get you down. It really forward slips well and has much stronger rudder “suckout” than other gliders I’v flown. That is as you apply more and more rudder and counter with opposite aileron to increase the forward slip eventually the rudder forces reverse as side lift pulls the tail of the glider sideways. This big beast really slips well and with landing flaps, spoilers and a reasonable forward slip easily gave 800 fpm descent and felt very controllable.

Landings were not difficult, and felt a lot like my ASH-26E, both gliders have very effective landing flaps.

Later that day I took a flight in my ASH-26E while Kenny and another pilot were flying the ASH-25, it really was beautiful to be banked up in a thermal with them and watching the wings flex on this big bird. Time to start saving my pennies for an ASH-30Mi.