Arcus - first impressions

Yesterday we had a visit from Schempp Hirth, having the brand-new
Arcus prototype in their luggage.

A couple of pilots from my club had the occasion for a flight - first
impressions were enthusiastic to say the least.

Assembly is similar to the Duo Discus. The wings are significantly
lighter than the Duo's ones, but the wing tips need to be raised to
nearly 7 ft (due to the huge dihedral), so they feel as heavy as the
wings of any other double seater. Apart from that, the assembly is
quick and simple, identical to the Duo Discus.


My own flight was only twewnty minutes with little lift - but to sum
up my impressions: If you think the Duo Discus flies well - the Arcus
is at least one league better.


The fuselage is the same as the Duo XL and the Nimbus 4DL. Compared to
the old Janus/Duo cockpit, it's grown significanly in length. To sum
it up: I measure 6' 7" and fit very well into both seats - in my
opinion it's by far the best double seater cockpit out there.

Aerotow is done the standard way: At the beginning flaps negative,
lift off with flaps at +2. Very good aileron authority from the
beginning.
New for a Schempp Hirth glider, the flap lever is mounted high in the
cockpit (in the same position as in Schleicher gliders). Gone is the
need to look down into the cockpit in order to see the current flap
setting. The flap lever needs very, very little force to move (the
movement is assisted by springs) - in my opinion it feels very
intuitive (much better than, say, an ASW-27).

Roll rate is *extremely* fast - the roll rate is comparable to the
ASW-27 and much better than even the Duo Discus. Very, very low stick
forces. Pretty amazing. All pilots compared the agility to the ASW-27.

The airbrakes are huge (nearly twice as high as the ones of the Duo
Discus!), allowing extremely steep approaches and making excessive
speed bleed off very quickly during the flare. Compared to the Duo,
precision landings are incredibly easy to perform.

The wing of the Arcus is significantly smaller than the one of the
Duo, allowing a maximum wing loading of 51 kg/m^2. Yet you can
comfortably thermal it at below 90 kph (!) at a wing loading of 43
kg/m^2. The "feeling" for the thermal is, as far as I could judge with
the little thermals I had, superb.

I'm not going to talk about performance since Schempp Hirth hasn't
published numbers yet - but I dare to predict that the sales value of
used ASH-25's is going to drop a lot because many open class glider
owners are going to trade their glider for an Arcus.
We all agreed that the Arcus is going to have a performance that is
very, very close to the open class (if not even better).



Conclusion:
Rob a bank and invest at least 150.000 Euros in a really, really nice
toy.


Cheers
Andreas

Thanks Andreas,

Most informative.

Chris