Flying with the NAN Models Xplorer
Jerilderie 2009 has been staged for another year, and I didn’t do too badly this time around, finishing 26th out of 65 competitors. I had some great backup from Joe Wurts, Steve Keep, Nick Chabrel, and Brian Hamilton, who all provided awesome and lasting advice.
Along with a great crew, I was flying a great glider, the NAN Models Xplorer, imported by Dave Pratley. The Xplorer is a 3.5m F3J/TD fully moulded carbon/kevlar/fibreglass glider, which can be acquired from Dave in various colour schemes. Extended tips are available.
The Xplorer is renowned for light air floating. My Xplorer truly revelled in the Jerilderie air, and I regularly achieved 9:58 or better, with inside 2m spots. I had two “bad” flights where we didn’t pick the air correctly, and I flew the X into crap air, and suffered.
Over the 5 days of flying, I only flew my F3B Icon a couple of times, and even then only during the Friday practice day. I flew the Xplorer over all 8 rounds of the competition proper, and during several fun fly days back in Sydney recently. I’m in total awe of the floatiness, and flat glide, that the X achieves. With a setup fine-tuned by Steve Keep, the landing approaches are slow and predictable. A great glider, and a worthy addition to my quiver of gliders, very much beginning to replace the Icons.
Over the two and a half years that I’ve been flying the Icons, I’ve become one with them, to the point where I instinctively know when I’m flying them too close to the stall, or too slow. I only managed to achieve great launches after Brian Lindsay provided some magic tweaks to the radio programming to my (now dead) Icon Bitza.
Now I’m learning to fly a new glider, and it’s quite a challenge, but I think I’m starting to get a feel for the Xplorer’s flying attributes. It doesn’t like to be flown slowly in thermal mode, and is much more tip-stally than the Icons - it’ll drop a tip, whereas the Icons drop the nose. Hands off, the X just wants to glide and glide and glide, so that’s how I fly it now - point it in a direction, and left it fly.
I went out to the HMAS field on Saturday, and had a couple of flights. The launches were downwind, with about a 5 knot breeze down low, but about 15 knots up at altitude. The X didn’t like it at all. With a bit of ballast, I think it’d do quite well, but at the moment, I don’t have any finished ballast bars to use. As a result, the glider was tossed around quite a bit, but even so, I managed to thermal away in a strong area of lift, and to my surprise, a flock of pelicans joined me. We flew with the thermal for a good 5 minutes or so, following it downwind, but as the glider was approaching a no-fly area, I hit the reflex, and flew back upwind to where I originally encountered the thermal.
Lo and behold, another thermal, but much weaker. Again, to my surprise, the pelicans followed me upwind, and began circling underneath me once more. Alas, Steve had to pack up, so I brought the X home to a straight-forward landing.
On Sunday, I again took the X out to HMAS for another funfly day. The initial few flights were pretty short, as the sink was horrendous in the cold still air. Around 2pm, the Club held it’s AGM, so Steve launched my X, and I had the field to myself whilst the power planes were grounded. I spent about 6 minutes or more doing lazy 50m circles at tree height off the end of the runways, and being chased by the crows. I was impressed that it floated so slowly down so low, and so flat. I worked a tiny bubble for ages, but it slowly drifted down the runway towards the wind sock, so I eventually gave up, and landed the X “on the runway” :)
At Jerilderie, we witnessed some rather interesting Xplorer wing failures. It seems that there’s a potential quality/manufacturing issue with some builds, as there are reports (and experienced at Jerilderie) of joiner box failures. There were two spectacular joiner box failures on launch, and one discovered failure on landing (the pilot knew something had happened on launch). It certainly made Brian and I nervous about our Xplorers (both of us had new X’s at Jerilderie). Joe Wurts also maidened a new Xplorer at Jerilderie.
However, that caution didn’t stop us from launching our X’s to the moon, or spearing them into the ground on landing. As a result, I doubt mine has the same problem (maybe it’s a manufacturing fault only with the lighter build X’s?), as I was punishing it, and really bending the wings hard on launch. Had some truly awesome launches too from Joe and Steve - real “Yip Yah!” affairs.
So where to next? I’ll definitely be placing an order soon for the extended tips (takes the span out to 3.9m), for the light air mornings, and later acquiring another X. Dave’s support before and during Jerilderie was very much appreciated!
- bec