I finally finshed up the new Acacia 3M xtail and got two sessions in at Davenport. Sat was est12-18 mph, having not flown the slope in a good year or more and with first flights I took it easy,flew high, no ballast. First impressions were a very stable plane, easy to fly,very smooth, decent turning, easy to land, but not overly fast. Came back Sunday, found Phil K from Kites Plus there flying, he measured wind speed at 18-23mph. This time added 4 slugs of ballast(a little less than 1/2 capacity), not wanting more as its still a new plane. This time I flew closer in to the area of better lift and pushed it more. Much faster this time, although I am not sure if I would call it a burner yet(although, w/a larger plane one can be fooled as they many times dont look fast when compared to smaller planes- in actuality they are really moving along!). Tried more agressive turns, it took them no problem w/o a tendency to tip stall. If you make a good turn there is little to no energy lost, its comes out of the turn flying fast. I used about 3:1 differential which seemed to work well with this plane(I may tweak it up a bit more). It certainly seemed clean, there is a noticeable lack of noise, although Im sure I havent yet tapped its true speed potential. I noticed and so did some others that it penetrates well, one even commented it flies as fast into the wind as with it. With out going into detail, I had several quality control issues with this plane right of the box and a few more I found during the install, enough that I was pissed about it, and I dont dont get pissed very often. But since this is a brand new design I suspect these issues will be resolved as the product line matures. I name all my planes, since this one didnt go well initially, I named it "Bad JuJu". Well, after flying it, I think we'll have to change that name- its a good plane. Walter PS: my one real design gripe- why do all these euro planes come with such small ballast capacity, especially a larger plane like this? This plane could be a pretty good unlimited racer, if you increase ballast capacity. --- GG
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