Comments on Silene

[Tango4]

There's a Issoire Silene up for sale that I'm interested in. Nice
side-by-side seating, lots of room for trick bits in the panel. Apparent
lightweight construction would appear to make the ship unsuited to its
current role as a club two seater and more suited to a 'socialising' role.

Can anyone give me any feedback on flight characterisics, handling
qualities, mainatainence problems etc. There seem to be *very* few of these
ships about outside France and data is rare. Is the 1:38 claimed anything
near to realistic?

Ian

[Denis Flament]

Tango4 a écrit :

There seem to be few of these ships in France too, and *very* few
enthusiasts about them... but I can give no advice for I did not
personnaly fly it.

[Bill Dean.]

There was a Silene based at the Long Mynd, Midland Gliding Club at one time.
I think it was a demonstrator, anyway I understand it was not there for
long. I think they used it for a while as a club glider, but they bought
something else.

I was not there at the time, I heard something about it much later.

Bill Dean, U.K.

>
> Tango4 <i...@tango4.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
> news:989143103.22895.0...@news.demon.co.uk...

[Don]

Bill,

The Silene that was based at The Mynd was actually owned by the club. Bobby
Neill was the importer and the club bought one. The main problem operating
it at the Mynd was the vulnerability of the low mounted tailplane.
As you will know there are many stones thrown up when the winch launch
starts (maybe not so bad now that the surface has been improved) which can
damage the tailplane leading edge and this often happened to the Silene.

Damage to the wooden structure on the K13s was easily repaired, and we had a
spare tailplane, but Jack Minshall was not happy repairing the GRP
tailplane of the Silene so it was sold on ( to the Essex club ?).

I only flew it once, with Bob Scarborough, when we had a 12,000ft climb
straight off the bungee launch, broke off the climb - no oxygen fitted,-
then did an out and return to Shobdon. It handled quite nicely but the
staggered cockpit seating was a little cramped for two large pilots.

Don Brown
Nth Wales
UK
Bill Dean. <bill...@freeuk.com> wrote in message
news:989180482.347110@dionysos...

[BAToulson]

In article <989143103.22895.0...@news.demon.co.uk>, "Tango4"
<i...@tango4.demon.co.uk> writes:

>There's a Issoire Silene up for sale that I'm interested in. Nice
>side-by-side seating, lots of room for trick bits in the panel. Apparent
>lightweight construction would appear to make the ship unsuited to its
>current role as a club two seater and more suited to a 'socialising' role.
>

Dear Ian,

There is a Silene based at Hus Bos (privatley owned) and the owner, Brian
Burgess, would, I am sure, be very pleased to let you fly it.

I flew with Brian as a "guest" in the Silene in the 2 Seater comp a couple of
times. I strongly recommend you fly one before buying. Try both seats (they are
staggered).

They go well in a straight line but can be a real handful in the wiggly bits on
a rough day!

Do not buy if you have to de-rig every time you fly. They are a real hernia job
to rig.

I do not have Brian's telephone number on me but if you telephone the Soaring
Centre, 01858 880521, ask for Pat or Andy and they will let you have it.

Brian only lives a couple of miles from the club and is a semi retired
gentleman farmer so can attend at any time!

Barney

[Christopher Nicholas]

The ex-Mynd one was not sold to Essex Club - maybe to Essex and Suffolk?

There is a privately owned Silene at Essex, and I believe there is or was a
Silene at Essex and Suffolk too - not sure if Club or Private. One or both
may be for sale. I can pass on a message to the Private one at Essex if you
want.

Chris N.

[Bert Willing]

I've been looking at one once when I wanted to have a side-by-side seater.
The only thing I would like to draw your attention to is the question
whether it is rated for winch launching or not (I would suppose that it is
not).

Anyway, compared to the Calif, there's no way to have a second glance at a
Silene...

--
---------------------
Bert Willing
Calif A21S
Come fly at La Motte du Caire in Southern France:
http://la-motte.decollage.org

Tango4 <i...@tango4.demon.co.uk> a écrit dans le message :
989143103.22895.0...@news.demon.co.uk...

[Ian Molesworth]

The Silene only has a belly hook ( A strange affair indeed, not the usual tost type ) and the launch I took on Monday in the ship gave us about 1250', plenty to get away with and up to cloudbase. We were soaring in about 15kts of upper wind so the lift was reasonably broken low down, no trouble staying with it though. Above 2000' agl it went up really quickly. Reasonably quite and nice to be able to just talk normally to the chap next to you!

The one I'm looking at has one or two bugs to overcome, not the least of which was a damned canary sitting on the elevator pushrod somewhere, the airbrakes not appearing to extend fully and an almost non-existant wheel brake.

The cockpit is 'snug' and moving the instrument pod forward a little would make leg-room in the left-hand-seat more acceptable but all-in-all quite a nice ship. In fact a general cockpit re-modelling would not go amiss. Changing the canopy opening method to one similar if not identical to the Calif, a smaller instrument pod, some nice instruments etc etc.

I'm a little worried about the rigging aspect, as someone has mentioned it is a big piece of kit. Rigging on Saturday morning and de-rigging on Sunday would be the order of battle I think, along with some trick rigging gear.

As for the spam-can versus tupperware argument. Plastic doesn't suffer metal fatigue and plastic is cheaper to repair these days. :-) :-)

Ian

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