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Page one. Day one: Training day and first flight. This is my training day with Ed Cleasby of Wasp Systems who is going to give me an introduction to the power unit and then demonstrate it in flight. Ed chopped off a section of the keel from my Airwave K4 just behind the rear rigging wires to allow room for the prop. It wasn't a pretty sight watching that happen but there's no alternative. After going over the set-up procedure with me he attached the Wasp to his own glider to demonstrate the takeoff and landing. His takeoff was in about a 5 mph/8 k wind and he did a few turns above the field before coming in to land again. My turn now. By this time it was later in the day and the wind had died away to zero. After attaching the Wasp to my K4 and hooking the limit lines from the Wasp to the leading edges I was ready to go. I'm used to doing nil wind launches from having spent years as a hang gliding instructor and from living in Switzerland for a couple of years where there is never any wind so that didn't bother me. Picking up the glider with the Wasp attached was surprisingly easy and it didn't feel much different to a normal hang glider launch. There wasn't much weight to lift, just a couple of litres of fuel in the tank attached to the top of the A-frame. This is a big difference to the Doodlebug which I flew a few months ago. The D'bug feels like you have a guy sitting on your back and running with it is no joke. I started to bite on the throttle to give it about 75% revs and began to walk forward while at the same time giving it more revs to bring it to full power. By this time I was starting to run and the glider had lifted off my shoulders. I could now accelerate and let the Wasp push me along as the glider gathered airspeed. I was mindful that I had to keep the bar in to keep a neutral angle of attack so as not to lift off too early. I quickly gained speed and just squeezed the uprights forward just enough to get me airborne. I immediately felt myself lift off the ground and I pulled a little more speed as I went for the basebar and put my feet up into the harness.I was flying and gaining height pretty quickly. I kept the bar in a bit but I was still climbing on full power. At about 300 ft I put in a gentle left turn to bring me back 180 degrees and over some woods where I continued to climb to 1,000 ft. I had to make the transition from the mouth throttle to the foot throttle and I began to feel around for the foot throttle. I couldn't find it at first but once I got it, it seemed easy to use. I don't know how I'll feel using it for extended periods but time will tell. I decided to pull up the legs at this point and this was easily done although it does need two hands. The technique is this: pull on the harness zip which also pulls on the legs. When you've pulled almost all the way, keep the tab in your hand and hold it onto the basebar. With the other hand, grab a leg and put it into it's clip on the harness frame. Swop the tab to the other hand and reach down to the other leg and clip it on. Easy. I thought I'd start to investigate the handling of the glider as my turns on the way up had been huge. I began to put in some fairly tight 360's and realised that the glider was handling in a pretty strange way. It didn't really want to turn and pushing the bar out felt like a real effort. I tried it at different power settings but it was bad whatever I did. I figured that if this was what powered flight was about then it was going to take some getting used to. I didn't like the feel of it. I knew that the bar position would be further back but that didn't bother me. It was the bad handling that I didn't like. I thought it was time to go in for a landing. I unclipped the legs and unzipped the harness, looking down just to do a visual check on the legs. When I put the Wasp on tickover it cut out. Great. (we found later that it was a minor problem with loose screws on the carb mountings) I set up a big circuit not wanting to put in any tight turns low down. I pulled on speed and felt for the legs touching down and flared gently to stop dead. Not bad considering it was zero wind. So that was my first flight on the Wasp. I was impressed, sort of, apart from the carb problem. I was pretty concerned about the handling though. I didn't get another flight that day as it was getting towards dusk. We fixed the carb problem and I drove home with my new toy. |
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