Alasdair,

You've got some interesting approaches to handling your Rookie flight controls. I've only relied on the thrust vectoring to get me out of the flat spins. I'm not sure deploying the airbrake gets you anything as you don't have a lot of forward momentum to "push" the jet nose down, but at the same time your canards are working against you. I would think that you put yourself into a more dangerous situation with your low thrust turbine having these deployed like you say. Having your nose wheel out all the time might help more than the airbrake as the weight is more forward depending on how you balanced it.

I don't use the canard as an airbrake, only the standard one. You need it to land the Rookie or will go for "days" on the landing approach.

Question, do you have brakes on your main wheels? Are they tied to down elevator?

Ken