Hi there.
In an other thread, I have said that the Junior is more roomy than expected. I remembered this from flying the Junior early this year. A couple of days ago, I did some circuits in it and my wife took these pictures: 
So “roomy” is a matter of perspective, I guess. But being that large, you kinda get used to sitting cramped in a plane. I think I could have removed the cushion for more room, as I did the last time:
I doubt that I’d fly around the world in this cockpit (now… my a$$ is a big… big, but I’m working on that), but it sure is a fun plane to fly.
Now, for comparison: 
I think the Cessna is well known to compare my size (196cm / 124kg)
Back to the Junior: It cruises with around 105 kts on the O-200 (about 22 litres/h Mogas) and has a useful load of 246 kg. It holds 100 litres fuel, so if you sit comfy, it’s quite a nice tourer for two. It has electric flaps, a steerable nose wheel and a separate brake lever. Very easy to handle on the ground. Superb visibility and can do gentlemen aerobatics (loop, roll, turn … pretty much what the Cessna Aerobat can do). The stick forces are a bit on the high side, and the centre stick is not my favourite (because I tend to write with my right) but nothing too tiring. It climbs with about 500 ft/min when loaded and uses 400-500 meters grass runway (no wind).
Okay, somehow I can’t upload an image to an edited post. Here’s the correct panel picture:
< broadly grinning >
The Lady’s trust in you must be great, to depend on your support so much – but what did she need to do, so far back on the C172 wing? Fuel caps are much more forward, and for a good reason, too? but at least, the leading edges were well apart
< more seriously >
Seeing the position of your knees in the first photograph, I have grave concerns about what your knee caps will look like after a really hard landing. Surely the dashboard’s lower edge must be supported by something solid (tube? L-profile?) waiting to bite them!
Oh, she was checking for fuel already. Any position holding her lower would be much more uncomfortable. so she had “length to spare” :-)
For the landings… I tend not to land that hard for one matter. And the dashboard would have hit my shine, not my kneecaps. (Where i always have some blue spots from flying small aircraft… but no pain, no gain :-)
mh, thank you for the post and photos…
As you probably know, I have some experience 
with the next design after this one, and so I’m curious about the Junior. I assumed that the Junior would be better suited to my diminutive (non-pilot) wife than me, but it looks like maybe it’d be possible. Another factor in my interest is that my US base is where Bjorn Andreasson first flew the prototype in the late 50s.
An super energetic old guy I know (he goes by Sparky, and is homebuilder and all around airplane nut) was around the field at that time and he was also friends with the man who imported a few Bölkow-built Juniors to the US in the early 60s. At that time there weren’t many similar aircraft so it was interesting to him… but very expensive in comparison to other two seaters of the era.
Jan – I have similar issues with knee clearance in my plane and rely on the five point harness to keep me in place.
Silvaire, I have read an article on the Bölkow, the Author, too, mentioned the aircraft being quite expensive to buy. But today, you’ll get a very competitive aircraft for not much money. I know of four or five Juniors for sale for around 20k€. If you consider for instance a Breezer LSA having about the same useful load, being about as fast as the Junior, not being aerobatic and more than 5 times that expensive (and just using 4 liters/hour less with an ugly sounding Rotax). And the Breezer has 25 liters less fuel capacity :-)
But it probably is more comfortable.
http://www.motorflug.de/cgi-bin/classifieds/classifieds.cgi?search_and_display_db_button=on&query=category&category=Biete+Einmot&results_format=
I have looked it up, there is a Junior on the market for an asking price as low as 15k.
an ugly sounding Rotax
Hm Hmmm Hhhhmmmmmm
Beauty is in the eye ear of the beholder… 
But for an engine sounding nice but then really nice, nothing will beat the Henschel 6-in-line diesel that powered the Setra coaches I drove in an earlier life.
On Monday I was within walking distance off the address listed in one of Bölkow advertisements! I could have walked over and had a chat on the weekend…. Alas, I’m now back in the US
Where have you been? Or where will you be the next time in Europe? Seems to me it’d call for a meeting.
