Killer funny movie by the way! Don't even pay attention to the reviews! Okay - Had a chance to actually fly my High End today!
Perfect weather, almost no wind other than that caused by strong thermals moving thru. A bit warm but not bad. Plenty of puffy clouds, and streets too. The winch today was a clubmates home brew with a few years on it, He made it using an outboard motor starter, a 1" diameter F3B style winch, and mono... not much bigger than a Lil Big Winch, but it pulled the High End up with no problems.. pretty impressive for a motor Not much bigger than a coke can! I flew it four times, and Ben Wilson took it for a stroll, so I could watch it fly. Flying a mid wing again is extremely different feeling! The HE's rudder is extremely effective when the ship is in cruise or lift, but almost disappears in sink...pretty handy tool, it really adds to the HE's ability to communicate! Ben fly's a JW, and so I figured he might not warm up to this ship, since its really a lot different feeling than that kind of ship but he figured it out after about a 1 minute of flying and was off working all sorts of different conditions. His comments were equal "wow"...mine too. The ship was described as 'groovy' by some of the big dogs who flew the early very heavy prototype, this one is 135" span at 74ozs so extremely light and agile. Very much like the Supra, reflex it and its a rocket, add 3mm of camber and she floats nicely...one thing that seems pretty unusual is that it doesn't seem to need much more than that for launch camber, the thing really rotates well and is soooo fast going up the line...the pings are spectacular...without that tendency to 'flop' at the top...she just levels off and heads off on its own. I expect like the Supra, it will take some time to really understand it fully but for now....did I mentioned its tied with the Sharon for looks? Gorgeous...and 2.4 friendly. Kind of nice not needing wrenches for a change...two piece plug in wing panels. Gordy This is not just another 'good' sailplane, in my opinion this is up there with the top 1 or 2 ships flying today...and I have one :-). **************Gas prices getting you down? Search AOL Autos for fuel-efficient used cars. (http://autos.aol.com/used?ncid=aolaut00050000000007)
