Not the best forecast for the day, but I was keen to introduce the crispy clean demo BGD Cure to the Scottish Borders weather, so headed for Witchie. It wasn't looking particularly promising on the drive over as the top of the antenna at Selkirk was in cloud!
Arrived just in time to stop a sleepy Dave H from driving off, and the two of us set up under a leaden gray sky with low clouds.
The wind and gustiness has dropped by the time I arrived, so time to get the new toy out of the bag, just as lots of posh people on horseback rode past to harass any foxes they could find.
I've never seen a glider so compactly packed as this thing. Precision packed on a factory floor by at least 6 people no doubt. Really nice build quality, and dead easy to ground handle despite the high aspect. The brake holders are the best I've seen. Some decent engineering thought gone into those.
In the air, the brake pressure is very similar to the Sigma8 but maybe with slightly less travel. Very light wind so a lot of scratching around, but not a bad day to get an initial feel for the glider. Definitely a day where two gliders was the sensible maximum on Witchie though, so no issues of having to move out of the farty lift to avoid people.
The Cure feels nice and solid (doesn't everything on a light farty day?), trimmed fast and converts speed to height really impressively. It wasn't a day for whanging around in a Tommy-esque manner but it feels agile and keen to turn on weight shift with just a dab of brake.
A couple very minor niggles - the brake handles are too big, and the handles on the Cs for rear riser trimming are too small and too low. Apart from that, me likely. Quite a lot. Need to get it out on a decent day with those thermal things though.
After a few short scratchy flights the breeze dropped even more, so we rounded off the day with a useful ground handling sesh to hone our already impressive fine control.
The Cure is now packed away just as precisely and compactly as it arrived. Sort of.
Derek
