Nice flight in the NG-1

tonycondon

Gastons CRO (Chief Dinner Reservation Officer)
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Mar 9, 2005
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Wichita, KS
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Tony
I've had the NG-1 out a few times this year, including last weekend here in Wichita where Matt Michael had a short flight in it on Saturday and I flew it on Sunday, also for a short flight. I was still looking forward to a day where we spent more time flying than rigging & de-rigging. Yesterday was that day.

Launch was a bit later than I would've liked, about 1:30 PM. Cu had been visible to the south starting about 11:30 AM and over the field around Noon. At launch time there was a bit of overdevelopment to the west and cloudbase was around 4500 AGL. It was cold, with temps on the ground in the mid-50s F. I had taken a little extra time rigging to install a new-to-me Borgelt B40 audio vario. It is a good fit for the NG-1 as it uses a normal household 9 volt battery for power and it features a remote switch to change from instantaneous to average mode. I can't reach the instrument panel on the NG-1 and it doesn't have an electrical system so both features are nice. Unfortunately I only had a chance to hook it to the static line instead of plumbing it into the TE system so it was a bit jumpy and suffered from stick thermals pretty bad. I had to train myself not to turn until both vario's were indicating a climb. The old mechancial winter on the TE line in this glider works very well.

My first climb averaged about 5 knots and I went through the start line and then caught another 5 knotter to nearly cloudbase. I had declared a 100km triangle down to the Kingman Airport and then over to a small town called Plevna and back to Sunflower. I wasn't having much trouble staying up with only one slightly low point near Pretty Prarie on the way to Kingman. Lift on course didn't seem to be quite as good as near Sunflower though, with average climbs around 3.5 knots.

The overdevelopment was still present to the west and as I headed towards Plevna I was headed towards the edge of it. I tanked up as high as I could before a relatively long glide into the shadow for the turnpoint and back out into the sunlight. I ended up having a good looking dirt field picked out and caught a thermal off it at 1000 ft AGL which got me high enough to give a fast final glide back to Sunflower. Whew! I finished with a 42 mph average for the 100km triangle at 1000 feet and pulled up into a thermal off the airport which I took back up to nearly cloudbase.

Our club has an annual trophy for speed around 100km course. Unfortnately I was about 2 minutes too slow to better my previous best. However we have another trophy for average handicapped speed over 2 flights on what is basically a 2 hr minimum time MAT. My previous slowest flight was a 48.5 handicapped mph flight in the Cherokee II and I knew that if I could keep up a 40 mph raw speed to finish out the 2 hrs that I would better that.

I was drifting towards Haven as I climbed away from my first finish, which is one of the turnpoints on our local club 50km triangle. After a little re-programming in the Oudie I was on my way to Haven and then back west to the little town of Castleton. On the way there I found a great climb just south of the airport that took me to cloudbase at 5000 ft AGL. That gave me enough to turn Castleton, run up to the Hutchinson VOR, and back to Sunflower for another fast finish at 1000 ft. Speed for the complete flight was 41 mph raw, just over 50 handicapped. Upon returning I did find a weak climb over the airport again but saw that Leah was back to help me de-rig and my feet were starting to get cold, so I landed. Total flight time was about 2:45 and I covered around 100 miles total. Not too bad for October.

I did have a lot of fun learning the final glide angle and high speed performance of the NG-1. It seems to naturally trim out at about 80 mph which seems a touch fast for the conditions I was seeing. But man is it fun to run in it. Hopefully we'll have a few more chances this fall to fly before winter sets in.

Here is the flight: http://www.onlinecontest.org/olc-2.0/gliding/flightinfo.html?dsId=2766420
 
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