[aligee]

The eurowing goldwing is a single seat pusher canard microlight and has a fantastic cooling system called open cockpit.One morning after a particularly difficult night shift I headed straight to Cumbernauld for a 07:00 departure before the forecast northerly crosswind spoiled my fun.I took my time over the external checks and the aircraft unusually started first time on the lawnmower pull start.Off I trundled and lined up on 26 into an 8knt 300 degree breeze.The takeoff was uneventful and I headed off north over the hills to Stirling only to find the air slightly more turbulent than I would have liked,my bum lifted off the seat a few times and I thought why is my a**e level with the side of the plane.I had forgotten to put my belts on and was freely bouncing around unrestrained,After a rather flustered 20 mins of total fear I landed back at the field and had a lovely 40 min drive back home to remind myself of the fun of flying .What a plonker. Ps never made that mistake again

[Paul_Sengupta]

I like the (1) in the title. Are we going to get a whole series of these?

[A le Ron]

Hence the use of check lists.

[Groundspeed]

That must have been exciting! I've watched a Goldwing in turbs and it looked "interesting" enough with the pilot fully stapped in, it does look a fun machine in calm weather though.

[aligee]

I was lucky enough to have another flight in a goldwing at strathaven 2 years ago.It was fitted with a rotax 447 instead of the old Fuji robin I was used too.The climb rate was amazing and you could easily exceed the vne in level flight and had to back off the power quickly.It still exhibited the same flying characteristics of stick to left with rudderon and count to five and wait for the violent turn.To come out the turn was opposite controls wait five seconds and hope you guessed the correct amount of inputs.It was a fun machine to fly in totally calm conditions and unlike rudder both rudderons could be applied at the same time and it would drop like a stone.Very interesting aircraft and I was able to log over 100 hours in G-MBPM which now resides in the museum of flight at east fortune.

[aligee]

Ps Paul if you provide the cake I'll happily recount another couple of my faux pas.

[Groundspeed]

Definatly inpressed the last one I saw flying was at Rougham about 10yrs back when I followed him around the circuit. Before that I watched one returning from Popham on a very thermic afternoon, he did seem to use a lot of sky.

[aligee]

Brian Harrison made the kits at East Kilbride and builders completed the kits.Brian has a flying example at Strathaven which I believe is the only one left in the uk and its a sight to behold watching it launch and fly around the field.Anyone who has never watched one flying always comments as to why it flys backwards.My friend fergus used to fly it over the runway at cumbernauld at 28 mph at 100ft and the canard would stall with the stick full back and a bit of power and it would just nod along as the canard stalled and unstalled long before the wing did.He never lost any more than 5 ft in height during 5 stalls.

[Groundspeed]

I met Brian at several of the SPLASH shows at Brum, what a great guy.

He was developing the Elf motor glider, but it seemed as fast as he got somewhere they changed the rules on him again. A pity it looked a promising, fun little aeroplane.

[Moli]

One morning after a particularly difficult night shift I headed straight to Cumbernauld for a 07:00 departure

Were you sufficiently rested... i cant see how you would be ?
Moli

[TouringTuggy]

Many years ago I was at a well known gliding airfield one summer evening when the tug arrived back from abroad, with a sheepish glider pilot as a pax. They had been to the factory to take delivery of the glider pilot's new toy, and aerotow it back. About 20 mins into the flight the tug pilot noticed the glider gyrating somewhat behind him, and then breaking the rope; he watched as the glider proceeded to gyrate down to crash in a field. Landing the tug in a suitable field nearby, en route to the crash site he found the pilot, with parachute.... It turned out that in his excitement to launch his new toy he had omitted to strap in properly, and his efforts to do so whilst on tow had resulted in him ejecting himself straight through the canopy...

They flew back to the factory and ordered another one!