Sparrowhawk Ultralight

I am curious if anyone has performed spin testing with
the Sparrowhawk yet and I don't mean from owners who
say it recovers fine when they only had the first indication
of a spin.
Brian

Sorry, I meant to say first indication of a stall before
it broke into a spin....
Brian

At 18:54 09 June 2005, Brian Iten wrote:
I am curious if anyone has performed spin testing with
the Sparrowhawk yet and I don't mean from owners who
say it recovers fine when they only had the first indication
of a spin.
Brian

Willie G wrote:

What kind of performance? I am still waiting on an
independent flight test of this ship.

The idea of an 11 meter ship with 36:1 glide ratio
seems unrealistic. I also wondered how a 150 pound
sailplane would have any penetration into the wind.

It's not 150 pounds when it's flying, but with the pilot, typically a
BRS, instruments, battery, etc, it's between 350 and 400 pounds. That,
and the small wing area give a 5 to 6 pound/sg ft wing loading. It's not
a "floater".


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Eric Greenwell
Washington State
USA

All,

Thanks for the information and sharing your thoughts. I would really
like to thank Eric Greenwell for taking the time to write the articles
in Soaring Magazine. I look forward to reading the Dick Johnson report
in the near future. Now time to schedule a trip to the northwest and
take a look for myself.

Eric Greenwell wrote in message ...
It's not 150 pounds when it's flying, but with the pilot, typically a
BRS, instruments, battery, etc, it's between 350 and 400 pounds. That,
and the small wing area give a 5 to 6 pound/sg ft wing loading. It's not
a "floater".

Definitely, the wing loading is important, not the only weight of the
glider.
When we know that the Silent-2 with its 663 pounds of MTOW (298 lbs of
empty weight) and 7,0 lbs/sq ft, reaches L/D of 39:1, also the figures
given for Sparrowhawk seem to be realistic.
Is it possible to fly cross-country with an ultra-light glider ?
After flights of Leonardo Benetti-Longhini, reaching with the Silent-2
a 627 km free distance, the definitive answer was given by Dave
Stevenson jr, who pushed with the same glider the FAI DU world record
of distance on 904 km ! :-)
(http://records.fai.org/gliding/pending.asp - file ID 11488)
Yurek

When I saw the record set by the Silent 2 I went to the web site so
that I could compare specs. They seem similar which is encouraging. Was
Dave's flight a ridge run ? I live in Texas so most of my flying will
be theraml lift . Anyway I may be out west soon I am going to go take a
look, seems like a fun little glider.

wrote:
When I saw the record set by the Silent 2 I went to the web site so
that I could compare specs. They seem similar which is encouraging. Was
Dave's flight a ridge run ? I live in Texas so most of my flying will
be theraml lift . Anyway I may be out west soon I am going to go take a
look, seems like a fun little glider.

Part of it was ridge running, but the majority of it was a downwind
dash. The URL for his flight trace and barogram is

http://tinyurl.com/9ger2

What a great flight! I've never flown that far, even in my ASH 26 E.
Dave has flown the SparrowHawk a number of times, so you might want to
call him about his impressions. Dave also flies a Ka-6e and an Elfe.


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Eric Greenwell
Washington State
USA