An interesting day at Sywell...

Hello All,

had a quick trip to Flylight Airsports in Sywell near Northampton last Friday - just a day trip courtesy of the red-eye 0700 flight from Belfast City to Birmingham. Regular travellers to the mainland UK really have a great service on their doorstep with the City Airport. After 40 minutes we were touching down at Birmingham and at Sywell for around 10ish (I got lost for a bit, but thats another story)- Thanks FlyBE!!

Anyway, the purpose of my visit was a day with Paul Dewhurst for a bit of training for my BMAA inspector ticket. Paul has been flying Microlights for donkeys years and is an Instructor Examiner - he recommends to the CAA if people are OK to be a Microlight Instructor (after the training of course) We all have to do a revalidation every 2 years, and Paul is one of the people who does this. I explained the whole Instructor Examiner thing to a friend who put a Star Wars slant on it, comparing the Examiners to Yoda and Instructors as Jedis...... I dont buy into that as I dont know anyone that looks like Yoda, and I lost my Star Wars light-sabre thing years ago ;-) Sorry, I digress

We done a fair bit of the inspector stuff, it actually took much of the day to complete and was well worthwhile. So, once the paperwork comes through we will be able to do 3-Axis and Weightshift annual aircraft inspections and check flights.

The Flylight hangar is full of lots of different Microlights, there is even a twin-engined Lazair in the corner. There are lots of Skyrangers and Flylights newly manufactured Dragonfly. Unfortunately the wing was folded for some reason so I couldnt get a spin in one. Seems like a great idea though, a Microlight that you really can fold up and put in the boot of your car, with the wing on your roof-rack. Paul D reckons they have sold a couple of dozen so far - and I nearly bought one myself (and still could do) Just a pity there wasnt one there for a quick rattle!! Ben Ashman has put some videos on YouTube of the Dragonfly, here's a demo of him unpacking one before flying:


The all-important wing has been manfactured by Aeros and is basically their 15m hang-gliding wing beefed up for a light trike and pilot attached to it. It has been tested for a max payload of 150kg which is ample. The whole SSDR thing is very tempting in the UK as the only options for new Microlights are priced around £27k......

I managed to get a quick 30mins in a GT450 at the end of the day. It's the first time I've got a spin in one, mainly because we are so busy flying our Airborne XTs with students etc. So it was good to get a spin in something different for a change, but why are all these new trikes focused on speed?

The differences between the XT and the GT450 are quite subtle, but all added up I dont think we will buy a GT450 for our next training aircraft. In fact if I was buying one just for my own flying then I would still go for the XT. A quantum with a bog-standard 912 is much nicer to fly than the GT450.....But I would say all of that I suppose!!

All-in-all an interesting day......and I didn't get lost on the way back to Birmingham which was a bonus!

Cheers, Victor
www.flyni.co.uk