Wednesday flight report

[Bill Briskey]

A bit tardy here and not free flight, but still worth posting, I believe.

I took a ride with Mark F on his two-seater aircraft. We met at the
airport near Hubbard and he pulled out his flying machine from a
hangar that was occupied by several other sport and ultralight
vehicles. I was expecting a fixed-wing craft, but was surprised to
see that the wing was basically a hang glider. Instead of hanging
from the wing in a cocoon and pushing the wing around to change
direction, we were going to hang from the wing, being connected to it
by a pivot point, and be strapped into a light-weight three-wheeled
structure with four-bladed ceiling fan in back and still use the
normal hang gliding method of pushing the wing around using the bar.
I attached a few pics with enough resolution that you can zoom in if
you like. :) And for clarity here, the wing is not fixed; note the
black insulated mittens hanging from the bar, from which you control
the position of the wing relative to the rest of the machine.

The passenger seat is great for people a lot shorter than me because
the main vertical support encroaches on your personal space. It would
be OK if your head were removed. It was nice though to be above the
pilot so you could see straight forward. The back seat is located
just above the red bomb (I meant fuel tank). I was pleased to see the
ballistic parachute mounted to the frame above the rear axle in its
white container.

After the requisite safety and flight plan discussion we just about
jumped off the ground once Mark had us up to launch speed, surprising
me with the quick accent rate, considering the cargo. We flew over to
different grass and/or paved airfields and landed, taxied, and took
off. On one short stretch Mark gave me the controls and I showed what
would happen if one were to transpose the left-right input. I finally
got if figured out, but it was difficult to see the instruments from
the cargo section and I ended up slowly climbing a few hundred feet
over 5 minutes or so without having a sense of it. Our max altitude
was about 1,650 AGL at that point.

We logged about 80 minutes of flight time including touchdowns and
even did some spirals and attempts at stalls and dives. Cruise speed
was about 40mph and stall at 28. The design of the wing made it
difficult to get yourself into trouble. However on landing we had a
12 knot crosswind and on our final approach got into some nasty
turbulence from trees. We must have looked like
chitty-chitty-bang-bang as we jockeyed for our final alignment with
the runway until finally settling into a sweet spot below 50 feet.
That was definitely more exciting than the spirals and stalls.

We packed the contraption back into the hangar and left for home at
9pm. Occasionally Mark tosses out an invite to fly with him - take
him up on it if you get the chance. It was a great learning
experience and fun, too!

Bill B