http://www.willswing.com/news.asp?newsSeek=286


http://www.willswing.com/news.asp?newsSeek=279


On Friday I took the opportunity to test out the latest version of the Wills
Wing T2 - 144. It had the new Mylar material leading edge, and a Dacron sail
cloth (not Mylar). Dustin took the all Mylar version that was being flown in
Santa Barbara to Ecuador and won the meet down there.


 I had flown a T2 144 earlier at the Wills Wing Demo Days at Wallaby Ranch
and really liked how responsive it was. Now I had the first opportunity to fly
it in light southern California conditions. I will be flying it over the next
four or five weeks, so I should be able to provide some in depth reporting.


As you may be aware I've been flying the Wills Wing Falcon 3 - 170 a lot lately
and that has been fun and so easy to fly, so that's the latest thing I have in
mind when I think about how the T2 -144 flies.


It's great to have these flex wing gliders to fly. Normally I just have my AIR
ATOS VR with me when I come to Sothern California in November and December and
previously I hadn't contemplated flying here then. But this year with the Falcon
3, still on loan to me from Wills after my record setting 205 mile flight in
Zapata, I figured that I should really check out what California has to offer
for fall flying.


I see my VR as a cross country machine and I just couldn't feel the attraction
of taking it to the hillsides and scratching around. Maybe I just lack
imagination. Somehow the fact that I had this little easy to fly flex wing got
me interested in really giving California a chance. And now with the T2, I was
ready to give it another chance.


Rob McKenzie was ready with the shuttle on Friday at 12:30 PM at the Andy
Jackson Flight Park in San Bernardino and it was easy to get the T2 up on his
Suburban. It really didn't weigh all that much more than the Falcon. I also
didn't require any help getting it off the Suburban when I got to the top, which
would not have been the case with the VR at 105 pounds. Really the T2 and the
Flacon seemed similar and closer together than the VR and T2 would be.


Setup was a snap. It was so easy. I had put the new Wills Wing skids on the base
tube (see article tomorrow on these) and I wrapped the handle areas of the base
tube with bicycle handle bar tape just to increase the grip, as I fly most often
bare handed, and I don't like it when my hands sweat and get the bar wet.


I put the T2 up on its control frame and pulled out the wings. I jiggled the
wings a little which pulled the cross bar back a bit and kept the wing tips up
and off the ground. I could have pulled back the haul back at this point, but I
decided to wait until after I put in the first three battens on each side.


After putting these battens in, I went to the front of glider, opened up the
under surface zipper and pushed back the cross bars. Then when I went around
back and pulled on the haul back. It was easy to get the clasp connected.


I then set the glider up on its kick stand, the stinger. The stinger has a
smaller diameter than the keel and two Delrin spacers/rings near its end that
allow it to fit snuggly inside the keel. The end ring also protects the ends of
the stinger and keel when the keel rests on the stinger when it acts as a kick
stand. Very nice.


It was easy to put in the many battens with the T2 hiked up on it kick stand, a
pleasure instead of work. Speaking of pleasant, the tip wands were just as easy
to put in (and take out later). Just stand facing the leading edge, after
putting the tip wand the hole at the end of the outboard tube, and slide the cam
over the end of the shaft. Closing the tip lever didn't require any undue
strength. I then put in the rest of the battens, with their flip tips that fit
without any adjustments or effort.


The sprogs just fit into their assigned location with a simple swing and all it
took was zipping up their zippers to lock them in place. What could be simpler?


After the pleasure of setting up the T2, I looked forward to getting it off
safely. Getting down to the hang glider launch spot, which is a bit of a walk at
Marshall, was just about as easy with the heavier T2 as the light weight Falcon.
I hardly noticed the difference.


I had hoped for a little bit more of up slope winds than I had experienced the
last few times at Marshall, but I got less. Maybe 1 mph. It had been a few
months since I had foot launched a topless so I was a bit apprehensive, but it
turned out to be no problem.


Normally I start my foot launches with a couple of slow steps then accelerate.
The T2 came off my shoulders right after the second step just like the Falcon 3.
The whole launch run was almost exactly the same as my previous runs with the
Falcon and the T2 launched without any dramas.


In the air, the T2 was definitely a different glider than the Falcon. It
reminded me right away that if I wanted to turn I just couldn't yank on the
control bar around, that I had to remember that I was a weight at the end of a
pendulum and I needed to use the control bar to shift my weight from side to
side.


I got into the bad habit of cross controlling on the AIR ATOS VR, because all
you do is move the control frame. You don't really weight shift to turn. The
Falcon was so easy to turn, that it didn't mind much if you cross controlled
some. It still turned. The T2 wanted me to shift my weight, which I quickly
started doing.


Next I had to remember to push out to get the glider to turn after I shifted my
weight. I hardly ever push out on the VR, and it turned just fine, so it took a
while to remember that, yes, shift your weight and push out to turn the glider.
I spent the rest of the hour and a half flight re-teaching my body and
subconscious how to coordinate turns on a high performance flex wing. It was
easy and fun.


The lift was light, as it had been for the past few times for me at Marshall,
and I glided over to the spot where I had found lift previously a few hundred
feet below launch, but, of course, with the T2 I got there faster and higher,
than with the Falcon 3. I found the 40 fpm thermal over the rocks facing the
southwest sun light.


It seemed that I climbed out at about the same rate as I had with the Falcon 3
170, even on this "small" 144 T2. Of course, square footage isn't everything
when determining sink rate, efficiency counts a great deal. The Wills Wing
polars show the Falcon with a 40 fpm greater minimum sink rate than the T2, but
I didn't notice the difference (http://www.willswing.com/Articles/Article.asp?reqArticleName=PolarData).


I did notice that the inside wing of the T2 wants to get more into the turn than
the inside wing of the Falcon did. This was a bit disconcerting at first, even
though I "knew" what was going on. The T2 is tuned so that the pilot has to do a
bit of high siding to keep the T2 in a constant radius circle. This makes it
easier for the pilot to wind up the T2 into a tight core and climb faster.


I had been used to flying the Falcon 3 around in circle as a fat, dumb, and
happy pilot. Now I had to work a little bit to keep in these light little cores
on the sides of Marshall. After a few minutes it became natural as the memories
in the darker recesses of my minds came to the fore and got my body lined up
again. Nice to be able to do this before I head for competitions in Australia in
late December. That's one lesson I won't have to relearn on the first day of the
Forbes meet.


I climbed out to 600' over launch and then got to fly straight for a while,
which is a treat here at Marshall. The T2 was a lot better at gliding than the
Falcon, so I got to float around checking things out quite a bit more before I
had to go back to work and get up again, working the weak stuff down low.


While there aren't many bumps in November at Marshall, I did notice that the T2
transmitted the shocks of "turbulence" to the pilot more than the Falcon 3 did.
When one wing would get pushed up I'd feel the jolt, while on the Falcon 3, it
wasn't a jolt, but a mellow push. I assume that the T2 is stiffer than that the
Falcon 3 which can just twist and flex a bit more and absorb the shocks and
turns them into marshmallows. Want to really feel the jolts, fly a rigid wing?


After an hour and a half with all the other gliders down on the LZ, and just a
few paragliders who launched an hour after me still in the air, I decided to
land so that I could get on the I-10 before all the Friday traffic and make it
back to Cathedral City east of Palm Springs before I got stuck. There was still
plenty of lift in the familiar places, so I raced up on down the ridge for a
while to get down.


I have really been enjoying my Falcon 3 landings so I wanted to make sure that I
enjoyed landing the T2. I had very much enjoyed it when I flew it at Wallaby
Ranch, so I figured if I just made a few adjustments for the increased speed and
glide, I'd have a pleasant experience.


The Andy Jackson Flight Park is a huge landing field, especially when you're
flying a Falcon, and I wanted to make sure that it was just as big when I came
in with the T2. There are some small green circles here the uphill/upwind side
of the LZ, and I had made it my practice to keep my eye on nearest circle.


I didn't know how much faster I would be landing the T2 compared to the Falcon.
I knew it would be faster, and I didn't want to over speed the glider coming in.
With the Falcon 3 I could just pull it as hard as I could and it would come in
straight and true down as fast as possible. That didn't seem like a good idea
with the T2.


I took a extra long down wind and base leg, really stretching it out to get
myself down as far as I could. I came skimming in just over the ground to the
east of the designated lz, trying to get myself as close to the slightly uphill
end of the field as possible.


The approach was fine and I reached up to grab one of the down tubes holding the
base tube with my right hand. The other hand came up and I floated twenty feet
past the circle as the glider settled and I flared and ran it out. It was a
faster landing than my Falcon 3 no flare landings but only a few steps. Well
over 3,000 landings and they are always a thrill.


I look forward to a number of other flights with the Wills Wing T2 144 over the
next four or five weeks. It is a sweet glider.