Great to see your progress, but you are much more patient than I was. I took one low tow to check balance and controls then took a 2000 foot tow! You must have quite a nose heavy CG if you are unable to stall it, although from my experience I think the elevator could be a bit larger. When I am thermalling I frequently have the control stick full aft, and when I added the spoilers on the wings I had to rework my elevator to get more movement because I could not get enough control to compensate for the nose drop when deploying them. And as you have found, deploying them close to the ground can be a bit tricky because the glider quickly loses altitude. After a couple of hard bounces I try to avoid changing them on final.
When I saw you were going to be there until the middle of next month I checked into airfare to France. Some of the tickets were surprisingly affordable. Then I found that my passport has expired. Damn! I would like to see your glider and see the grin when you finally get your first soaring flight. Hopefully sometime soon!

Hi Erik,

During the car-tow hops I was experimenting with different flap settings, but eventually found that 11° was enough to get the glider to lift nicely. I'm not sure if I tried 15° or not - I just stuck with 11° as being good enough to get me up.

We found that you can indeed car-tow at lower speeds, but it takes much longer for the tail to lift off the ground before the glider can start to rotate and lift. 65km/h was, again, a happy medium, reducing the amount of tail-dragging before getting airborne.

The microlight / delta tow trike pilot said he was towing me at around 70km/h (my ASI was reading closer to 80km/h), and the initial acceleration from stand still was such that the glider was off the ground in just a few feet. The tow up at that speed was very pleasant and in no way stressful either on the glider or me! I found it important to start every tow with the stick fully forward so as to get the tail up off the ground as quickly as possible. Once the tail is up (you can feel and hear the vibrations cease once the tail is flying) a gentle pull back on the stick and the glider floats into the air.

As the tow trike gathers speed I needed to push the stick forward again so as not to get too high above the the trike (but high enough to rise clear of the wake turbulence.) once on tow, the optimum position was easy to maintain. I was told to keep the nose of the trike abut 2/3rds of the way up its kingpost. This corresponded with keeping the trike just sitting above the middle canopy hoop on the glider. Looking past the pitot tube mounted on the noose cone of the glider and keeping my eyes focused on the trike, I could see two pitot tubes (the paralax effect). If I kept the trike between the two pitot tubes then I was always directly behind it! This made the tows particularly easy for me!!

The wind has been howling from the north here for the past three days and is set to continue today and most of tomorrow, I think. I might get lucky with a flight on Sunday evening, but Monday looks more likely. I've lost the use of the tow trike now that the Swift school has closed for the season, but I've been told I can safely tow behind the aero club's Tetras or C42 ultralights if they fly as slowly as possible (~80km/h).

All the best,

Phil.

Hi Rick,

Flying over here just to see me - that's game of you!!! Actually it's just as well your passport scrubbed the mission - the weather here has been very trying, with long spells of Mistral (very strong northerlies) keeping both the Swifts, Archaeopteryxs and me on the ground for days at a time. It's very frustrating, but I guess it's the end of the season here. I hope you'll get your passport renewed for next summer - I think I know someone with a Carbon Dragon you can borrow... if you can prize him out of the pilot pod!

I decided I'd better do a few car tows before aero-towing, to get a feel for the glider, as I haven't aero-towed for a couple of years (when I did my sailplane training). The ground-skimming bungee hops I did in Ireland weren't really long or high enough to get a proper feel for the controls. As it turned out, I needn't have worried - the CD is just a dream on tow. Very light and responsive, and easy to keep on axis behind the trike. The controls are all very effective and sensitive to the smallest input when on tow.

The glider was still quite nose heavy on the first high tow and I was pulling back all the time. The slightest lapse in concentration during that flight resulted in an alarming nose dive... as you'll see in the next video!

Like you, I find that opening the air brakes results in a pitch-down movement, but it was easy to control even with the already nose heavy glider. They are also savagely effective!!! 1/2 open gives me around -1.5m/s sink, and fully open finds me plummeting at -2.7 to -3m/s - like a manhole cover in free-fall! I haven't played with the air brakes too much on approach yet (just opened them a little to get a feel for them on downwind) and I need to practice precision landings with them so I can put down in the rather smaller fields we have in Ireland.

I did not experience the odd stick forces in roll that you described after your first flights (the stick wanting to fall left or right of center when rolling), so that must have been an artifact of your build. The stick force in roll on mine are smooth, left and right, with slightly increased resistance as you reach the extremities of roll. Did you check your roll bell-crank and push rods against the plans after your first flights? The spring loaded rod-end ball fittings are at a slight angle to the push rods themselves - I wonder if that may be contributory - or is there any flexing in your push rods? I made mine from aluminium tube with a continuous length of 6mm threaded rod bent to shape inside. They're heavier than they need to b, but stiff and stable in profile!

All the best,

Phil.

It's been 10 years since I've been across the ocean and seeing your flights was giving me that extra little push I needed. Next summer!

In the stock configuration, if you let go of the control stick the weight of the elevator will cause it to drop and the glider will go into a dive. Is that what you are talking about? Everyone I know has put a bungee or spring on the elevator cable so it supports the weight. I have a spring attached to the thimble on the cable that pulls the elevator up, just before it goes into the boom tube, pulling it down. On the other end of the spring I have a cord that goes down a few inches to a pulley, then goes forward to a cleat on the right side just below my arm rest. I use that as sort of a trim speed adjustment.

You will notice the strange control stick forces as you go to the extremes in the flapperon settings. After several years of flying I've found the only really useful ones are 5 and -2.5 anyway, so I never use the settings where the strange control forces become a factor.

Hi Rick,

I've been slowly adding ballast, a little at a time, to the space just under the vertical tail (mine is removable) and was up to just over 1kg of ballast on the last test flight, and it made a big difference - the glider is now only slightly noose heavy and I can almost take my hand off the stick without it diving. I've added another 0.5kg to see how that feels, but haven't flown with that balance mass yet.

I was thinking about how to add a trim spring to the stick, and was considering adding a length of bungee directly to the stick and going back through a cleat on the inside side wall of the pod, just under the pilot's elbow. I was also thinking about the possibility of adding a small counter-balance mass to either end of the elevator (like the flaperon counter-balance). I like the description of your cleated spring on the elevator cable just below the tail boom. I'm going to experiment with both solutions and leave the counter-balance idea for another day.

I haven't fully explored the extremities of flap settings properly, so didn't notice the odd behavior. I'll keep an eye out for that next flight.

This part of France is extremely beautiful (it's the heart of lavender growing country!) and there is lots to see and do. Aspres is about a two hour drive from either Marseille or Nice airports and the area is littered with air fields where you can rent a glider if you want to do big distance XCs. Aix-en-Provence, Sisteron and Gap are the big towns in the area (lots of great shopping and sight seeing!) and Avignon is not too far to drive for a day out. All are very beautiful and will keep any non-flyers busy with your credit card! If you're serious about coming over next summer (go on, you will, you will you will!!!) I'd be happy to help you out with suggestions and local knowledge.

All the best,

Phil.

Ok, here's my first high flight on aero-tow, to 2600m amsl (the airfield is at 830m amsl). Take-off was at around 07:30 so as to ensure absolutely smooth air and no wind for my first tow in ages... which meant an Oh-five-hundred wake-up alarm. What does the 'Oh' stand for? Oh my god, that's early!!

Yes, yes, the video is only marginally more interesting than watching paint dry, but there are a couple of moments of excitement! Feel free to fast forward through the boring bits!

Enjoy,

Phil.