First flights and observations from Philip Kolb
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26/3 Munich windy
We experienced lovely spring like weather in Munich today. The fist time over 20°C for nearly 4 Month now. Went out flying with the Monster today (heavy layup). We had 6 - 8 m/s Wind. And I bended that wing for the first time. Lovely launches, lovely mostly rough thermals, but strong ones. I attached one nice launch-log. But they all nearly looked the same. Between 294m and 311m. Turnaround (sure) at 200m, a 1.4mm P39 Line and a 55mm diameter on the winch.

Flying was just more exiting than launching. The climb rate was huge, but so was the sink by coming back from the downwind side covering ground. The Monster flies more like an F3B Ship, not turning that tight as the lighter one. It's clear that the heavier tips cause this behaviour. But I'm not unhappy for using this model in turbulent conditions and expecting it to fly more stable there.

19/3 Back in Munich
I had a really lovely day flying on our clubfield in Munich today. I took out the just finished "Monster"-Perfect and the first one. I did some first installations on the Monster just to see, that it flies well. There are no big differences in the flying behaviour and the handling to the lighter one. I just could recognize some slower movement by trying to circle very tight whilst flying slow. I think this comes from the heavier tips of the wing. But above all.....these were my really first flights in calm air with the perfect. I took the lighter one after some flights with the "Monster" for the air was so smooth and this plane is dedicated to be the one for "normal" conditions. I experienced air with nearly no sink and very large areas of consistent light lift, just to follow for some 10 minutes downwind (we had very little wind today) having gained 200 meters of altitude after all. I just marked, that the handling of the perfect in this air was very stable (some of you might definitely say: "Way too stable."). I could recognize this by a slow whipping from tip to tip as I tried to fly as slow as I can without stalling it. So I removed flight by flight more lead from the nose. The plane is still nice to control, even tighter turns at very low speeds seem to be possible and the floating speed is very stable as well. I really loved to fly this ship today. It was far beyond that aggressive style we needed to fly during the last two weeks. For the day I ended up removing 20 Grams from the nose, which equals a CG-Position of 110-111mm (have to measure it once more). The last flights of the day were the most pleasure.....Just floating more than 20Minutes above the Munich trade fair centre which is just 250 Metes away from the field and was still a little warmer than the rest of the field. Or just floating out the limits on sunset by letting the plane hang. Now I am really confident. As long as the perfect will float like this evening I definitely would say, that this potential is good enough for the morning and evening rounds. I just hope, that the conditions on our field were not too good today. So I try to go out early in the morning several times to check this performance a few times more doing sunrise flights with a logger aboard. :-)

14/3 Hello out there!
We are still alive and flying. We spent three more days experiencing calmer air. Unfortunately it was again far away from floating conditions. Wind speed was quite slow with some 3m/s, but the wind direction changed to southeast. So the airfield shows up rather turbulent for having a few hills in the foreground. All though I got quite used to the behaviour of the model in rough air I had fun with it now in a more relaxing way! As long as I did not enter the rough layer near to the ground it was even possible to leave the plane longer periods of time on its own. Letting it hang, letting it fly, no problems. The setup proved to be suitable in calm air as well. After all we have to admit, that the perfect is very easy to handle. And we even could try out the flap ability this time. For not stopping the plane or slowing it down too much only small flap settings are required. I think it can take some more than the 2° we flew whilst hanging in that 3m/s wind when the wind is totally gone.

Mustafa took out a 1.35mm Handtow line and his Perfect to log some tows. We tried to keep it as realistic to the conditions as possible, so some 5 second launches seemed to be the choice for that kind of weather. Interesting that it was much more difficult to do identical launches on handtow compared to the winch launches. You'll find a few "average" launches attached. The maximal reached altitudes were varying between 181 and 216 meters. The launch times between 4.6 and 5.6 seconds. The launch altitudes are just less interesting in my opinion than the proportion of hookoff-altitude and launch-altitude.

So after all we are quite happy with this first period of testing and flying. We are really looking forward to meet on the first Eurotour events for flying the Pike perfect in competition. As soon as we will have reliable data of sunrise-floating I'll let you know and see. Thank you once again to Samba model for producing and providing this new glider and to Mustafa V. Koc and the guys from Istanbul-Soaring Club for providing their airfield and all the lovely surroundings!

Yours: Philip

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10/3 Flying again!
Today was flyable weather again... After nearly one week of rain, storm and snow. Istanbul still shows its windy face, so floating out the limits wasn't possible anyhow. Thus another day of working the air and another day of extreme pleasure. We tried out flying the new ship ballasted as wind was still fairly strong (6-8m/s). Covering ground is far easier than with an empty ballast tube while pulling g's in tight thermal turs is no problem with the additional weight as well. So we soared nearly every corner at Riva-Airfield experiencing marvellous lift after a very cold night and lots of sunshine during the day. Might have been a great day for going on a cross-country flight as well today. So how can we show up with any good feedback by only experiencing Pike perfect in such a subjective way, only judging, not measuring?

Some of you might say that our experiences are not trustable or neutral, so how to show up with some figures? Believe me we try to write down our experiences as realistic as possible, but when it comes around experiences you should note, that they can't be 'neutral' in any way.

So today we put an altitude-logger in the perfect and tried to do suitable launches for that kind of weather. In a competition an F3J-Pilot would try to gain as much altitude on a proper launch after a minimal launching time for the air showing off energetic. To get valid and reliable data we tried to hook off as exactly as we could manage after 3 seconds of launching time. we used a standard F3B-winch to have the same amount of power in every launch (just keeping an eye on the battery and change it as soon as the voltage goes down) which was equipped with a 250mm wide and 55mm diameter drum and a wet 1.45mm diameter Speedline. The turnaround was installed 150m upwind of the winch.

We did 26 usable launches with Pike perfect and several with another F3J-plane usually used in that kind of conditions. There were two launches where I released the model in to a wind gust that caused the model to slide to the side right after the release. I had to use some coorection for the launch to go on. This takes time! The average Hookoff-time was 3.04 seconds (I was quite astonished by the way how exact you can hook off whilst counting the time!), average hookoff-altitude was 70.39m and average launch-altitude was 151.08m. There was no significant difference to the smaller all carbon F3J-model we used for reference mark able.

So hopefully we can show up with some measured graphs flying calm air soon, all the best, yours:
Philip

Launch	Good one
Launch	Best one
Launch	Worst launch

 
 
Go to page 2 of Philip's log HERE

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