Kyril

Flight time so far

Around half a dozen flights in-between showers in 30 mph on Mickey's slope at the Bwlch, followed by around an hour's airtime on a mixed day at the VR slope at the Bwlch, which is where the video comes from.

About the airframe

It only needs around 60g of nose weight – amazing. The RDS is fantastic; the complete lack of slop and blowback gives more aileron authority than the Ceres even though the geometry means that the end to end aileron travel looks slow using 3150s. In practice, I was able to take out all mixed flap to aileron and remove the negative expo that I use with the Ceres.

The practicality of the airframe is excellent. Fuz ballast is a boon and the semi-square fuz cross section makes it really easy to hold for launching. The aerial through the tail works perfectly; not a hint of a glitch or any dead spots.

Flying

The Kyril is a very sophisticated and harmonised plane. The reduced span and area made me think it would be much livelier than the Ceres, which it is but not in an in-your-face way. The Kyril has a has a certain refined feel to it which means although responsive, it is never twitchy. It's kind of hard to put into words but I was lucky enough to drive a Ferrari 360 Modena and that felt similar; raring to go and wanting you to abuse it but civilised with it.

It's very tempting to liken it to a Freestyler in terms of general handling with a hint of the Martinet about the way it turns. Aerobatically it is quite a revelation; it needs very little down to sustain inverted flight which makes the whole repertoire very neat and easy.

In short it is a fantastically effective package; immensely practical, fast, well behaved and a real joy to own, which makes you feel warm all over when you slide it out of the wing bags.

Bits, bobs, hints and tips

Like the Ceres, ballast is your friend. She's actually ridiculously slippery without ballast but whack some weight in there and she'll thank you for it.

The down going flap available with RDS was plenty to allow very positive approaches and landings in the lift zone.

The jury is out on reflex but just a little did feel as though it helped at higher speed.

Snapflap was interesting; I think it'll take me a few more outings to nail it down to perfection but I was getting some insanely fast, ricochet turns using quite a lot of snapflap.

More soon (assuming it stops raining one day)...