I’m extremely pleased to announce that the Le Fish plan will now be mirrored on Laurent Berlivet’s excellent Jivaro-Models website. This is a big deal for me and an honor, as Laurent’s site features plans for a wide number of excellent models, including the tremendously influential Madslide of Benoit Paysant-Le Roux. Thank you Laurent!
Flips and Spins with Le Fish Light from Dawson Henderson on Vimeo.
Another cool new video from Dawson. He’s flying his lightweight Le Fish in some pretty strong conditions at Mormon Lake Overlook near Flagstaff, Arizona. After having his vertical stabilizer once again “surgically removed” at WeaselFest by a ravenous Weasel (this is the second time this has happened!), he’s gone ahead and modded his rudder to try a lower aspect ratio shape. It seems to give some interesting performance changes.
Here are his comments:
“I had just replaced the tail group of my Le Fish Light with something a little different. The vertical stab and rudder were much more low aspect and had about 60° of throw both ways. The horizontal stab had lightening holes cut behind the spar and additional counter weights added to the LE… balancing the stab fore and aft. I liked the changes. The new rudder seemed to help with stall maneuvers… especially the spins and the H-Stab never fluttered.”
Watch for the really cool outside spin beginning about 1:45… he loses almost no altitude (thanks to his Le Fish’s superlight 21.5oz weight) and ends up doing pirouettes around the nose. Very cool! Beautiful smooth flying from Dawson despite what look to be fairly blustery conditions… always a pleasure to watch him at play!! 
P.S. – keep watching till the very end for the surprise bonus segment!
Le Fish 40″ from Rhys Porter on Vimeo.
Rhys Porter of Australia has built and flown this very cool 40″ wingspan Le Fish scratchbuild using a downscaled version of the Le Fish plans. Posting about it in the “How to Build a Swiss Fish” thread, he writes:
“Vac bagged fuse and wings, super light layup with only one layer of very very light glass over most of it, with two layers in the LE and around the nose of the fuse. 5mm Carbon Tow strips as spars top and bottom, Kevlar hinges. Aimed to make this as light as possible, so it will come out of the bags looking DLG style… Fingers crossed it works!”
It came out great and has got to be one of the smallest Le Fish I’ve heard of yet. Looks like it’s fun to fly… great job Rhys!
Alex sloping a mod multifun- With midair from John Scahill on Vimeo.
Slope Shark from John Scahill on Vimeo.
Here’s a cool story: Alex Hewson and friends hail from New Zealand and Australia and were here in the States on a slope soaring holiday to check out DS sites and get some new personal best top speeds recorded. They stopped by WeaselFest on Sunday and Alex took control of John “Big Gas” Scahill’s VTPR -modded Multifun (with larger, TP42 airfoiled wing) as well as one of Dan McCleary’s Shark VTPR gliders. Some really nice flying ensued! Great job Alex and thanks for the visit, you’re welcome back any time
More amazing Dave Garwood photographs of the American VTPR vanguard flying together at WeaselFest. The quality of photographs Dave was able to produce for this event is truly awe inspiring!
This is my favorite photo of my glider and flying ever taken. Dave Garwood has really made my day with this one!!
This is my 17oz ultralight Le Fish flying at Ellwood Mesa here in Santa Barbara, California and this image defines everything about what I’m trying to accomplish with California Style VTPR aerobatics: light lift, close in, exciting flying that is tremendously fun!
Jitter and the ExCali VTPR Glider from surfimp on Vimeo.
Great video of Justin “Jitter” Gafford flying the ExCali this past weekend. Justin has a tremendous amount of raw talent, is still very young, and is just going to get better and better. He won a Swiss Fish from Peter in the last SlopeAerobatics.com Video Contest and the practice he’s put in with that plane really shows in his flying of the first ExCali prototype. Peter and I both feel that he’s going to be an important player in the future development of VTPR aerobatics here in the US.
More great photography by Dave Garwood…this time it’s Swiss Peter flying the ExCali prototype he built. Beautiful!
You can read all about the ExCali VTPR glider project here
Another amazing shot by Dave Garwood… this time it’s Swiss Peter flying the 2.5m ExCali under the 2.6m wide limbo setup at WeaselFest. What a great photo… what great flying… Wow!!
Le Fish at Ruitoque’s Mountains from temerario on Vimeo.
So it turns out there’s a pretty good aerobatics scene in Colombia! Here is a nice video of Carlos Calvache flying his Le Fish outside Bucaramanga, his hometown. This was his second Le Fish; he built his first one in 2006 and it was the first one shipped to Colombia. So cool to see this! Next he says he plans to build a lightweight version. I can’t wait to see what develops from this.
