Salut à tous,
Je vous fais un "cut & paste" du compte rendu que j'ai fais sur PGForum. C'est en rosbif, mais pas trop compliqué je pense:
Hello all,
I received my XC3 size 24 three days before the Europeans in Abtenau, just on time. Despite the bad weather, we manage to fly three valid task, one cancelled and a training day (plus some freeflight sessions). All in all, I managed to fly it around 15 hours. So, here are my first impressions about the XC3.
On the scale at the take off, I saw that my all up weight was between 91 & 92, glider size is 24.
From construction point of view, we can observe some nice evolutions. Risers are news, pretty thin (1cm) with a reinforced loop . The glider is a three liner with A, B and a split C (the external C is on its own). Brake handles with swivels. In the canopy, “Gibus arches” are to be found and the leading edge is reinforced through some “rigifoil” like system, on all cells in the center, on cells connected to the line on the outer part of the glider. The glider is really light, amazing. LE has triple stitching with a reinforced band imbeded.
The first point which positively surprised me is the take off behavior of the glider. The XC2 had a tendency to come up fast and if the pull was too strong on the risers, the glider had a tendency to overshoot and had to be stopped. With time one got used and walked towards the glider to avoid being pulled off the ground. These are things from the past with the XC3. I found the glider very easy to launch. It comes up easily, not as quick, do not overshoot (so far at least) and most important, doesn’t pulls you off the ground. I found that really nice, I look forward to test this on our tricky Belgian takeoff.
The second thing I noticed is the trim speed. I have no instrument to check the actual value except my GPS which indicated a steady 40-41 km/h.
The handling is really nice with brakes pressure being light, even lighter than the XC2 I’d say. The glider has a sharp handling with no tendency to go out of the turn. It doesn’t require much correction to stay in a core, just a slight weight shift or a little bit of outside brake. The brake travel is OK to me; the glider reacts from the very first centimeter once being at the contact point.
The speed system is way lighter than on my XC2, and that’s a real plus. Thursday during the first valid task, I used it quite a lot up to half bar. Nice. Glider stays stable and solid (tension in the A’s was good and stable). I used the C to steer the glider when on bar, it works well.
During the first task, the one that has been canceled, the air was choppy. I had a 50% asymmetric in the leeside of the thermal above the takeoff. I didn’t feel it coming, but the glider reacted well. Counter steering was easy and not demanding, the glider didn’t turn or not a lot, and the recovery was quick. The tips take a bit more time to be cleared. I also got a frontal when being low in a windy valley. The air was really bad, I didn’t feel anything coming, and I guess it was a nasty turbulence. Recovery was quick and symmetric.
I’d qualify these behaviors as “confidence inspiring”.
Performance wise, there is a clear plus coming from the XC2. I flew quite a while along a late 2009 Mercury proto (Mercury 3 proto), and didn’t feel that much disadvantaged . The flight was comfortable and the glider confidence inspiring. I even filmed quite a lot in the transitions.
I’ll try to get more performance out of it during the next flights. I need a bit more time to get used to the extra performance and adapt my trajectories to take advantage of the extra glide performance against the XC2.
Saturday we had an amazing 141km task. Due to some bad choice, I made some low save that cost me a lot of time. I couldn’t finish on time due to that. I have been able to make a low save thank to the good sink rate and most of all a great handling and the ability to do sharp turns.
During this last task, most of the thermals were in the lee side of the Dachstein and were quite “tonic”. The glider was not too nervous in these conditions and I felt quite comfortable.
I also tried the ears (not the big one) with the outer A alone. They come easily and stay stable
I received some feedback from Belgium as well, a friend of mine (who flew Aspen 1 & 2, XC2,) had the opportunity to test it last week. He has roughly the same feeling than me. He commented on the extra performance of the wing. He feels that the glider requires a bit much more attention than the XC2, but that the step is not that big and really manageable. He also mention that, maybe due to the higher AR, one should pay attention to the tips that sometime get cought by the brakes lines. Not a cravate, just that the trailing edge sometime get cought by the lines. A slight pull on the brakes clears that easily, but better taking off with a clean sail.
So far, these are my first impressions. Performance wise, I feel there is a plus but I’m looking forward to fly it along EN D gliders back in Belgium.
Some pics at
http://www.fbvl.be/belgianteam/photos/I'll keep you informed as soon as other feebacks arrive
Oli
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Aéroloisir. Gradient, Woody Valley, Digifly Importer for Belgium
