1. Calculate your c.g. location and placard your HP-14 for maximum and minimum pilot weight to stay within permissible c. g. limits. The allowable c.g. travel is from 25% to 40% MAC or from 7.6" to 12.2" aft of the backside of the seat cross-tube.
2. If your loaded c.g falls outside this range, carry sufficient ballast to bring the c.g. within limits.
3. Check the entire control system and attaching pins or bolts for cotter keys and all nuts and lock-nuts for tightness to insure that nothing can come apart or change setting.
4. Set control surfaces in neutral position and ascertain that stick and rudder pedals are in neutral.
5. Move all controls, check for proper direction, extent and freedom of movement.

Elevators UP 15° Down 10°

Rudder Right 15° Left 15°

Ailerons UP 30° Down 15°

6. Operate flap to make certain that it works freely and does not bind when retracted.
7. Check tow release for proper operation.
8. Make sure canopy pins open and close freely.
9. Test flying a newly built sailplane is not a proper undertaking for a pilot with no experience in a sailplane so don’t waste a lot of hard work by trying to fly your HP-14 if you don’t have at least a private pilots license with a glider rating.
10. For the first flight, select a long sod field or wide runway free of closely set lights that could catch a wing tip. Most important, take off directly into the wind.
11. The flight should be an auto tow of only a few feet in height with release made in plenty of time to land straight ahead without danger of running out of field. With flap settings of 30° or less the HP-14 will float excessively so be ready to crank in more flap if necessary to stop.
12. The purpose of the first flight is to check control reactions and general flight "feel" without getting dangerously high. Flaps can be set at 30° for this flight and left at this setting unless it is necessary to land quickly. Then, of course, full deflection should be used.
13. The characteristics of flaps are considerably different than those of spoilers and different flight techniques are required. Below are points to remember:

1. Flaps increase lift, spoilers decrease lift. Hence, to maintain a constant altitude above the runway, the nose must be lowered with flap and raised with spoilers.
2. Flaps decrease landing speed, spoilers increase landing speed.
3. Small flap deflections will increase the "floating" tendency and may extend the distance covered before touchdown.
4. Large flap deflections increase drag tremendously and make steep angles of approach necessary to maintain flying speed.
5. Flap deflections increase the effective angle of attack of the wing and result in a stall at a lower fuselage angle of attack.
6. Complete stall with full flap is approximately the same attitude as the "at rest" position on the ground.
7. When cranking in more flap close to the ground during landing, it will be necessary to push the stick forward to avoid "ballooning" due to the additional lift.
8. Always approach for landing at a minimum of 60 mph. Maintain this speed while cranking flaps up or down to adjust approach angle.
9. You can safely retract the flaps at 60 mph to extend the glide if you get too low.
10. Never come in low and slow with large flap settings since you can do nothing to extend the glide if you get too low.
11. Full flap deflections provide extremely high drag and steep approaches surpassing any other known type of drag brake and unlike most spoilers, they are very effective at low speeds.
12. If the HP-14 is floating down the runway and doesn’t want to slow down and land, then you just don’t have enough flap cranked down.

 (Article courtesy of Alex Upchurch, who is co-owner of HP-14 #12, C-FWHZ)