First there is the Light Speed .Its supposed to be the next step in bagged wing competition DLG ships. I also own the Light Hawk and it gives me a great comparison since it was my favorite until recently. The launch of the Ls is a problem for me. Its so light at 7.5 ounces that I hook it to the left pretty good.The launch height is OK,but nothing special. If I get the hook worked out I might get it as high as the Light Hawk.I have probably 5-7 hours of total flight time with it now and have all the kinks worked out except the launch. The plane has to be flown all the time,unlike the LH which you can leave alone once its on the right path. But on the other hand this makes the plane super receptive to finding lift. It signals any little bit of lift,which can be bad if its just tiny gust of wind or rotor.The good part is that there is very little penalty for taking a couple of turns if you keep your speed up.When faced with some wind it seems to penetrate quite well.I am not sure if its that much better than the LH , but that might be the weight difference(1 oz). If I ballast up the Ls it will probably move out quite well.That's my next project,to make ballast for the LH and LS. When flying in lift the LS climbs with the best DLGs on the market but the key to flying it is to keep your speed up. If you slow down too much the plane is a little hard to fly. The ideal conditions for flying the LS is that day when you have med to high lift and light to medium winds. The Light Hawk is better at low lift ,low wind conditions .I am not sure yet which of the two is the better but I am leaning towards the LightHawk. Since both are going to be my back up planes it might just come down to what the conditions are.
The Sirius is a totally different story. While it took a lot longer to shake down and trim out ,now that we have it all done this will be my plane of choice.In fact I have another one on the way .The thing to remember is that there is no rudder on the Sirius,and it uses reverse differential (more down aileron than up).Both of these things make trimming the plane very hard..But once we figured out the cg and adjusted the throws/modes it morphed into the best plane I have ever flown. Now I know how Bruce was feeling flying his at Poway. I was initially worried about low level turns in low lift conditions,but all of my reservations were put away today. I was able to cruise longer at low levels than with any other plane I have ever had .Turning at low altitude was super easy and the plane kept up momentum when other planes might fail. The Sirius has major legs as well,I found that I could launch high and range as far out as needed with little altitude loss. The Sirius signals lift pretty well,not like the Light Speed but I rarely had a false read with it either. During the whole trimming process I was 50/50 about having a rudder,but now I don't miss it at all .There is no disadvantage to no rudder at all.Kudos to the Sirius team for thinking outside the box and making a world class DLG for a great price.Dealing with them from across half the world has not been easy , but in the end I am super happy and the other problems we have had are getting solved. Thanks Mattias and Jonas for all the help..
We will see how I perform this weekend at a local contest.
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