Gravity, a design exercice

After 26 years since the design with my clubmate Olivier Bordes of the Jedi ( in 1992 !!!), a 2.6m aerobatic saiplane, I took again the pencil to create a new aerobatic plane. So let me share with you the result of this design exercice. The plane name is "Gravity".

Few words about the approach I choose: I'm not a big fan of symetrical sections, too radical from my point of view. If they are the best for pure aerobatic in good lift, the rest of the time, they are more delicate, not really pleasant for thermalling, having often a low tail attitude at low speed. Flying in the alps, I don't have big lift very often and have to fly in small to medium condition too. Also, even if I like to watch heavy load glider video such as the Stingray and all the declination within the same 2.9 to 3 meters family, I find them also far too radical to fly in all conditions.

The objective with the Gravity is too obtain a polyvalent aerobatic glider, capable of thermalling, as good in low speed aerobatic (VTPR) as in academic aerobatic, capable of more ballistic flights with some ballast, the kind of plane you take alone whatever the conditions are, especially when you have to walk to reach the slope, as we usually do in the french Alps.

The 3 views plan has been drawn using Inscape, a very good vector drawing freeware.The 3D rendering has been done by Matthieu B. who obsiously masters the 3D cad software as he  did it just in few hours. Many thanks Matthieu for your great help !

I'm pretty happy with the result and how good the plane looks. I hope you will like it too ! Now it is just a drawing for now. I would love to see this plane coming alive, one way or another. If a manufacturer is reading this and is interrested to manufacture and sell it, please contact me in private.