After the last crash of an electric plane, I’ve reconsidered my flying requirements. I though hard about what I enjoy, and kept coming back to gliding. I learnt to fly RC on the slope, and I enjoyed the heck out of it.
On sunny, breezy days, you can spend quite literally hours soaring a RC glider back and forth along the slope, catching thermals, and blasting about performing aerobatics all over the sky.
If you get really serious, you can fly extremely fast on the slope (or more correctly, behind the slope). Truthfully, the all-out hardcore dynamic soaring never had a massive appeal to me. I had many more enjoyable flights in light lift, battling the light wind to scratch out the best possible lift and flight time.
So I’ve bought both of the models that Dream Flight produce. The amazingly light (120-130 GRAMS) Alula, and the slightly more robust but still light-wind Weasel Pro.
The Alula is not really a slope plane. Of course slope lift will help, but the Alula is the kind of plane that will fly in similar lift that seagulls use. Slight ridge lift from a sea breeze against a dune, or a breeze against a building, or a light thermal. The most common way to launch the Alula is with a side-arm launch – similar to a forehand Frisbee throw, but with less spin. Alula fliers associate flying with fishing: cast out and see what you can find. It might be a 30 second dead-air flight, or you might hit a thermal and speck out the plane at 500feet.
The Weasel is bigger and heavier, and lends itself to light or medium slope flying.
My plan is to build the Alula first to make use of the hot summer weather to go thermal hunting.
