Off to Europe!

The weather in the UK has been excellent for the ducks, and the geese.
I'm happy for them, they love the rain and get excellent ground speed
when they fly downwind in the gales. I wish I could honestly say that
the British summer is better than the Australian winter but I'd be lying
about it if I did. Here some brave scientists are suggesting that global
warming is to blame for the bad weather due to an altered jet stream
pattern, but in the polls conducted on tv only 1 in 4 Britons believe
that global warming is affecting the weather. The good news is that on
Thursday at midnight I catch a ferry to France and get to enjoy a few
weeks in warmer climes. Of course I will have my glider with me and I am
planning to catch up with Jason & Karl in Switzerland and can't wait to
finally get to fly again.

Milk Hill

Looooong Drive

As it happened the M25 was gridlocked before the M4 exit on the way there and that together with the Jazz festivals and vintage car rallys in the area meant it took me nearly 4 hrs to get to the site. On the way back a fatality closed the M25 completely and I had to cut through the centre of london to avoid the M25 completely. Another 3hr trip. Lugged the glider up the hill but after watching the wind switching around and the brave pilots who flew bombing out decided it was not worth the long carry out for a 5 min flight. The forecast was for sun and SW winds, it was overcast and everything from SW to NW, Oh the fabulous british summer. Current score, 7Hrs driving and 0Hrs flying.

Perfex Update

Today I again rigged and de-rigged the Perfex. It took me 45mins from
unzipping the bag to clipping in my harness. I don't think I am going to
be able to do it much faster than this by myself, but I am happy with
the time it takes and the effort required. Yesterday I followed the
instructions carefully and did everything in the order listed. Today I
never looked at the instructions once and found a few ways to speed
things up and make life easier.
When rigging it is much easier to pull the sail over the leading edges
to the nose plate and then put the keel extension through the keel
pocket and lock it in place, its much harder to try and guide the keel
through the keel pocket when you are dragging the sail on. It is also
much easier to leave the cross tubes to one side and clip them into
place once the sail is in place.
When de-rigging it is easiest to pull the sail back until you reach the
first leading edge junction and then just disconnect the centre and
outer leading edge sections, that way the A-Frame and keel are one part
and the sail and leading edges are another, its much easier to remove
the leading edges from the sail once they are loose.

The only thing I don't like about the Perfex so far is that you cannot
lay it flat with the tension on, today was very windy and I am always
worried when the wind gets under the sail and lifts the leading edges
up, it risks damaging the nose plate as there is no strength there at
all to resist the force and allot of leverage centered on one area. I am
lying on the basebar with my Myth2 harness so I either need a shorter
hang strap or perhaps if I can find a very compact Karibeaner that might
lift me up enough...

De-rigging was again about 20mins.

I am waiting for my IPPI card to arrive and the weather to break so I
can go flying.....

Aaargghh Picassa and Blogger.com Beta still Broken!

After reading in a forum that it was finally fixed I just used Picassa
to make the last few posts. After discovering that it couldn't handle
more than 3 images at a time after the first failed post I split the
posts up and was pleased with the way it all looked. So pleased I went
and changed my template to something new, hey I was in a design kinda
mood. After a couple of hours I was happy with the results and so and
went to see how it looked in Safari on my mums iMac. Oh just great
except, where are all the images? No images, just links pointing to

http://localhost:1338/078870d72d7cffd4f1e5bc0fdc6b8371/image2829.jpg

Port 1338? You gotta be joking. *Port 1338* Millennium Worm. TCP
backdoor created by the Millennium Worm. That's what port 1338 is
famous for... I watched and waited for Picassa to upload those images, I
watched them go. Now I have to manually upload them again using the
blogger interface that I really hate.
Come on Google, the original picassa blogger interaction was perfect,
how can this suck so badly for so long?

This is just me on the scales weighing in at about 68Kg..

Now here I am wearing the Perfex like a huge backpack and weighing in at 91.5Kg, so that makes the Perfex 23.5Kg in the bag.

Now here I am with the Perfex and my Aeros Harness on my back and up to 103.5Kg, which is 12Kg for my Myth 2 with parachute and helmet, ouch half the weight of the whole glider, I definitely need a lighter harness! It means that when I go hiking up a mountain somewhere I am going to be carrying 35.5Kg or more than half my own body weight. I know all you real men out there are already chuckling at the idea of 35.5Kg being much to carry and yes I know my climax weighs at least that much, unfortunately my back is absolutely destroyed and my weakest point. Anyway I can't wait to get back into the air and fall in love with my new Perfex.

Here she is back in her bag. It fits nicely and if I had my old bag style harness it would fit in there easily too. There is no way my Aeros Myth 2 Harness will fit with its rigid back plate. I might see if I can pick up a cheap bag style harness somewhere locally....

Here is my Aeros harness and the Perfex side by side, the perfex packs up to just under 2M in the Bag so quite suitable for checkin desks and cable cars, that's why I bought it!

A nice side profile and hopefully the neon green will be clearly visible to other pilots!

Do I look happy? I hate taking photos of myself, but yes I am pleased. (It stopped raining for 5 mins)

The name makes a big promise! I can't wait to find out if it lives up to it. The Airborne Fun was certainly named well!

I always wanted a birdesque logo on my wing...

Like a Mars you tension by pushing back the crossbars and clipping into an anchor point, the trick is to try and pull forwards on the A Frame to prevent the battens being pushed into the ground.

Its 170Sqft so about the same as the Falcon and in between the Fun 160 & 190. I am usually at the top of the weight range for my gliders (or just over) and so it will be interesting to see what the performance is like compared to my Fun 160 that I miss so much.

Wow a nose nappy on a Single Surface Glider, feel the performance, ha ha. Soaking wet within an hour of arrival. Yay UK Weather.

The centre lufflines hang off the rear kingpost wire on a sliding thingy, interesting...

Here you can see where the hang point clips into the King Post. The whole glider is held together with these spring loaded buttons.

Here for example is one of the spring loaded push buttons on the crosstube. The tubes are incredibly light with the exception of the Kingpost, Keel and Uprights and Base Bar, I am guessing that over half the weight of aluminium comes from these heavy parts..

Perfex Arrives!

My new Perfex has arrived. It took longer than I expected but as the delivery driver explained it had been sitting in their depot in the UK since last week whilst they tried to figure out what a Haenteleiter was for. Exactly why that caused a delay I am not sure, but I'm just glad its here now. As it happens the weather here has been pretty wet and stormy so no flying opportunities were missed anyway.

Here is the Glider assembled, It took me ages, but mostly because I would work for 5 mins and then it would rain and I would run for cover and so on and so on... It took me less than 20mins to De-Rig it and I think I should be able to setup from scratch in about the same time on my next go.

Nice curved leading edges and a Nose Nappy too, pretty Green Aaah.

The whole thing is designed to be pulled apart quickly and easily and to lock into place securely for flight. The Floating crosstubes are attached with seatbelt type webbing with a quick release clasp like they use on harnesses. The Hang point comes from up on the kingpost.

A simple but effective nose catch with the dontforgetmeingermanmessage!