We continue doing short flights on the Pelicano, and it performs great!
Today we car towed to 230ft agl for a full pattern with a normal downwind and a bit of an extended base to loose some altitude. Finally a small zig zag on final to get it down even more.
It flies really nice! Handling is very gentle, mostly rudder input as the ailerons don't do much.
The wind was about 3mph, the car towed at about 30mph. We used 200 meters polipropilene line tied directly to the car. We have not set up a for a car side release yet, so the drivers assistant was prepared to cut the tow line if necessary.
Initially it took a bit to get it flying, (Probably because of the no wind situation) but once in the air it went straight up. I kept the climb rate slow until I got enough altitude to recover from a rope brake, after that I pulled back and it started climbing really fast (About ~ 900fpm)
It could have kept on climbing, but we ran out of runway, so I had to release..
According to my vario logger, best rate of climb was 4.4 m/s to about 72 meters agl.
Next time, we will try with a bit of wind, and I am sure we should get 100 feet more.. (At least)
Taking very rough numbers.. I estimate the average L/D to be around 11/1
release at 70 meters/ time to touchdown 57 seconds. = -1.22 m/s.
Asuming 30mph (13.3 m/s) / -1.22 m/s => L/D = 10.92
Of course, this is flying a pattern, so best L/D might be way better..
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