Tuesday, December 18, 2012

My new BioniX 13 is on its way

I have been rather lazy at updating this BLOG over the past two years, partly because I've been doing a lot of flying in my Tanarg/BioniX - I flew 17 hours last week alone!

Anyway, the boffins at Air Creation came up with a new 13sq. Meter BioniX (my current wing is 15 sq. M) and so I bought one - it should arrive soon after Christmas which will be almost exactly 2 years since I installed the BioniX 15 on my Tanarg.  I'm told that the advantages of the new smaller wing will be:

a)  Higher top speed or, more relevantly, better fuel economy at any given speed due to the reduced drag.
b)  I should experience reduced effects of turbulence due to the smaller wing area given that wing area is fairly proportional to the amount you get bounced around in rough air.
c)  Lighter control inputs - the 15 takes a fair bit of muscle, especially in roll at lower speeds.

Of course there will be sacrifices too:  my payload will drop by about 25 kilos and I will lose a small amount of speed at the lower end - I'm guessing about 2 mph. This higher stalling speed will make it more difficult to land my trike in smaller spaces.

Anyway, enough speculating - I'll write a report when I've had a chance to test her.  In the meantime, here's to a Merry Christmas to everyone and safe flying in 2013.

1 comment:

  1. Hey Mike,
    this is Chris from Vimeo.
    Hope youre fine!

    Would be nice to be hearing from you soon again!
    Im just back from my 2 weeks on Phi Phi and it was just GREAT!!!

    Chris

    ReplyDelete