Monday 22 September 2014

More Test Flying Aresti 108

Some more flying of the Aresti 108 at the Firle Beacon on the South Downs, East Sussex yesterday. It's fairly light wind around 15-20mph but occasionally thermic and no ballast was necessary. Much smaller hill than Bopeep and in fact the bowl was the poorer one as the hang gliders were using the best one! So this really is showing the big 108 doesn't need a massive hill/conditions.
Greg Lewis flew then Dave Woods had a go and well, you can see the results! Greg tells me he then had difficulty getting it back off Dave! Dave is a 'top' classic acrobatic pilot and he put the Aresti 108 through it's paces- enjoy! One of the characteristics of the Aresti 108 that has been commented on over and over that in the air it looks like it's flying slow. However pull the elevator and it does a tight loop, which you would not expect from that 'speed'. No doubt its a scale effect thing and it's actually going quite quick but the size just makes it look slower. So, the energy retention and needs a bit of adjusting too but of course this is what is making this plane so amazing to fly. It's graceful and still has plenty of oomp for manoeuvres.
Dave makes a tongue in check joke for James about the revised enlarged rudder still being too small, it's not but obviously Mr Woods wants to keep James on his toes! BTW, I'm told Dave never got out his own plane yesterday and Greg had to fly his Crossover because he could get another go with the Aresti 108!

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