In the last 20 years, the emphasis from most designers has been on performance. Most have offered a top-end blade wing and usually an intermediate wing using detuned blade wing technology.  The original lightweight, single surface wing of the late 1970's became a thing of the past, and new pilots were taught early to aspire to a bladewing as soon as they could possibly manage it. 

The trouble is, many pilots simply don't need a blade wing.  Many only fly about 20 or 30 hours a year and maintaining the skills required to handle and land a blade is difficult.  Many fly small coastal sites where they compete for airspace with slow-moving, low paragliders.  Many get fed up with the weight and complexity, not to mention the short term obsolescence of the new gliders. 

In the last few years, the concept of "skyfloating" was re-invented, and some manufacturers started producing slow, light machines for this market - and some interesting things were discovered.  The new floater machines were really a buzz to fly - the handling was so light. And they seemed to outfly the new blades when thermalling. It was only on interthermal glides that the floaters lost out.  And a lot of folks who had been dropping out of the sport through age or commitments were re-entering it on floaters. 

OK, now for the meat of the article.  I bought an Airborne FUN. What do I think of it?   I'm no Denis Pagen, but here's a quick rundown on my first day out - and some later experiences. 

It was a strange day - the forecast was for light winds tending S-SE and strengthening in the afternoon.  In response, I motored down to Flinders with a brand new Fun 190 on the roof hoping for some nice Flinders Southerly air. 

When I arrived the wind was West-sou-west at about 12-15mph. Flinders launch faces due south.  Hmmm.... well, there is a section of scrubby cliff about 30-40ft high above the carpark on the eastern side of the bowl that faces SW... I wasn't going to go 40km to Portsea if the wind was shifting, so I decided to give the low cliff a go. 

First impressions then. 

Setup. The manual says 6 minutes. I did it in nine, including walk-around.  I don't think I could do it faster without rushing. 

Weight. The manual says 51 lb. It weighs 57 with all the bags (I weighted it before I left) .  Probably about 52-53 without.  It sure feels light to pick up, and boy is this thing BIG! 

Ground handling. Boy is this thing BIG! (bears repeating). Out of the wind, it's a joy to heft only 51 or so lb about.  In the wind you *know* you've got 190 sq ft of sail trying to catch the breeze.  It wasn't a problem for me to get all set up for a self-launch in the 14mph breeze, but a few more mile per hour and I think a wire man might be useful! 

Takeoff - In the breeze, the glider just floated off. I was pleasantly surprised to find myself established into the narrow lift band without really having to think about it.  There followed about 5 seconds of overcontrolling when I made a correction I deliberately thought about - but that was the last time I consciously had to think  about how the glider reacted. 

A few passes put me up high enough to try some manoevers.  Shallow turns were effortless.  Steep turns - well co-ordinated  with no tendency to over bank or roll out, and very little effort required to initiate. 

Slow flight. I thought I *had* been flying slowly until I initiated a deliberate slow stall.  Things got very quiet, but I was still flying.  Eventually, the bar wanted fairly strongly to come back at me and the nose nodded down without wing drop. The glider has a distinct tendency to "tremble" at very low speeds, and I assumed this was separation of flow over the long root section as it becomes slightly stalled, but not enough to affect the sink rate adversely.  However, I have since learned that it is actually the turbulence from the crossbar that causes this trembling!  Addition of turbulator strips on the crossbar cured the problem! 

Speed - plenty of positive bar pressure opposing input, but not a lot of speed compared with my Shark.  Not gonna win any races in this baby! 

After an hour of playing scratch, it is I guess a vote of confidence that my first landing was an on-top. (not on the golf course, btw). 

A quick drink and a Mars Bar, and off again to catch the breeze as it slowly swung more Southerly.  As the main face came on, I was able to  get a few hundred feet of altitude.  Time to wring it out.  A few  whoop-de-do turns - then some serious 360's.  The thing 360's on a dime. I thought to myself - "you could do these with one arm tied behind your back!"  Just to prove the point, I racked off a couple of tight ones one-handed. 

The wind was still a bit West of south, but I was surprised to find I was able to cross the western point and get down to the far western cliffs.  I did not think that would be possible in a floater in a wind that far off. 

It was getting late. I'd been cliff cruising for about 3 hours, so I set up another top landing on the money and packed up (10 minutes!) 

Landings
After flying my Shark, the Fun is a bit of a surprise, because the stall speed is just so low.  I found initially that I tended not to believe what the wing was trying to tell me (ie: still flying), as I've had a few landings where I've either flared too early, or skiied in on slippery grass.  The secret is to ignore actual airspeed and do a reasoned-out landing; keep easing out till the glider will no longer hold altitude, then flare.  Mind you' I've never dropped the control bar, even in the poor landings, so it's pretty forgiving. 

More on Takeoffs
The Fun spoils you on the coast with it's low speed takoffs.  Mentone has a takeoff that's marginal for a blade wing in light conditions. You have to turn straight away and that can put you out of the lift band if you are slow.  And there's no real run.  On the Fun, this was a doddle, and where my friend Gavin took about 50 yards or so to get back to takeoff height in his Xtralight, I was up and soaring above the cliff in seconds. 

Why buy a Floater?
I bought this floater for 2 reasons - one because I'm sick of dodging the  paragliders while I'm climbing through them in very light conditions on our small sites on the coast - the slow and large Fun will give me a more compatible closing speed as well as an edge in sink rate.  Also I'm working on a very light trike, and the Fun seemed like a good wing for the job.  (Trike weight 65lb incl. engine). 

Downsides:
OK, a speed demon it's not, and I don't expect to set any glide records.  Flying at Mentone I found out first hand that the wing doesn't do too well crossing gaps when the wind gets up. There is a section of this site where the cliffs drop away into a bit of a venturi. Normally in the Shark, I don't even notice it.  With a wind a bit off (headwind across the venturi) and up around 18mph, this section put me on the beach. But nevertheless, it was a fleeting inconvenience, and I was back up top for a relaunch without even unclipping in a few minutes. 

On another day, flying at Mt Martha, I possibly got the best height I've ever had at this site flying in a 20+mph wind that was a bit off to the South; I was able to "park" in patches of cloud suck in a way I can not do in my Shark.  However, when it came time to land, for the first time ever, I was not able to make it down to the Mt Martha beach, instead landing halfway, just before the bathing boxes, unable to penetrate over the no-lift section of scrub that separates the cliff areas. 

Into the Clouds!
One of the reasons I got my Fun was to use it with a lightweight soaring trike (the Thistledown <- click for details).  One day i was happily thermalling, engine off, about 500 ft below a cloud and decided to head for the edge, seeing I was getting close.  But all the speed I could muster wouldn't stop the vario singing, and before I could clear the edge of the cloud, I was sucked into grey. 

For between 5-10 minutes I was stuck in the cloud. No compass or GPS.  I had no idea what direction I was going in, and the only strategy I could come up with was to try to keep the wing flying at a normal airspeed and "G" loading, in the hope that this would result in a reasonably straight course and get me out of the cloud.   Well, it wasn't so easy, and if I'd been flying a 3-axis machine I think I'd have exceeded Vne very quickly and come down under the 'chute.  Fortunately, the pendulum stability of the trike configuration, plus the huge drag of the machine meant that even though many times I must have been in spiral dives, with the wind whistling in my ears and the g force building, the Fun held together.  I eventually popped out of the cloud 1500ft higher than cloud base (went in at 7500ft!).  I flew for another hour or so, but decided to leave thermals with about 1000 ft to spare before cloudbase! 

Final Words
Flying this wing is for me a real flashback to the late '70's.  It's light, simple and yes, it's Fun! 

Interestingly, one of my friends says he'd buy a Fun for flying inland and keep his Xtralight for the coast where he likes to cross the big gaps. However, he lives on the West coast. Here, east of Port Phillip bay,  there aren't a lot of gaps to cross..... 

As a closing note, the Fun has all the usual quality we normally associate with an Airborne wing.  A clean sail by Wingtech never fluttered even in my bar-in-hard tests.  The frame and hardware are the usual first class Airborne construction, with plenty of protection at wear areas.

Returning you now to your usual program 

John.