Sport 3 Aerotow Test Flight - A Bit of Everything

Описание: A bit of everything! This was a dealer test flight of this small (135) Wills Wing Sport 3 after a repair to a broken keel.

The plan had been to tow above the clouds. My thermal-hungry tug pilot (Carl Wallbank) couldn’t resist thermalling under the cloud to base and then we struggled to find where the blue was again to get back to climbing and get above. It is the first time I have stayed level and descended on tow! It was doable but hard work managing the rope tension and after a while I had had enough and popped off. Carl says that 5 seconds later he burst out into sunshine. I should have held on!

I then halved my height deficit to an ATOS in a climb to base (don’t listen to people who tell you an ATOS climbs better than a flex!). Annoyingly, I had expected only a sled ride (in October in the UK after all) and so I didn’t bother to attach my phone mount for the variometer telemetry meaning I only had the audio to work with. The thermals were super smooth and easy to fly.

In this video I also show you checking the trim speed of the glider and how on this glider it was trimmed far too slow. I clip in at 86kg which is in the upper half of the weight range so I should really have the trim set forward (it is still in the factory position in this video in the middle setting). But even then this slow a trim speed was unusual so this allowed to me to identify and fix the fact that the trailing edge tension on this glider was too slack leading to too much billow hence the slower than usual trim. I have now tuned that out for the owner.

Finally I narrate through setting up a landing circuit. Accompanied with the distraction of the narration meaning I said when to flare but left actually doing it a fraction longer which (probably combined with the slow trim speed) led to me flaring just too late. I have still never broken an upright landing a hang glider so I don’t think my landings are too shabby!