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Last year with the 337, I arbitrarily put down 1/3 flaps as soon as we started the circle. Depending on the wind and sun angle, the circles can become ellipses and the bank angles get up to 45 degrees to get the pictures that the scientists want, and the focus gets to be on tracking the surface 'targets' rather than fine-tuning the airplane configuration.
With the STOL 336, I've found I can delay or even omit the flap extension, depending on how aggressive the maneuvering needs to be to get the data and photos they want. One thing we did notice, in straight and level flight, the airplane flies in a pronounced nose-up attitude, to where vis over the nose is almost marginal. I should note that we fly the survey tracks at 100mph GS; obviously it's better at more normal cruise speeds - but not much.
As I noted before, I can't imagine the $$ involved in a conversion would be cost effective strictly for ride improvement, or even for what we do; this just happens to be the airplane we were able to lease this year.
I can't answer the question on whether the ailerons are supposed to droop with the Robertson kit. Ours don't, and the airplane logbook shows that it's a Robertson conversion.
Joe C.
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