- [Carlo] So what wing were you flying today, Nancy?
- [Nancy] Ah, I was flying the gorgeous,
playful advanced Epsilon DLS.
- I was also flying a gorgeous playful Epsilon DLS.
- What a coincidence.
(both laughing)
What a lovely wing. Let's start on the ground.
So building a wall and ground handling and all of that.
What a dream.
Responsive. So you can build your wall.
It doesn't flap about too much.
It sort of sits and we've had, we've flown the wing
now on lighter days, sort of doing forward launches
reverse launches, and a bit more winds
just seem to be easy to control.
Just didn't require too much pilot input.
Didn't require over breaking,
over steering or anything kind of, nothing frantic,
it just responded to what you were doing.
- Yeah, I agree.
So the inflation is really easy
and it just fills up nicely.
Doesn't, it's not like hard to get the air in
and get the glider inflated,
as you'd expect with this level of glider.
- Yeah.
- Actually it's a key point to me.
I think it's really important for a low B wing
that on the ground it should be,
the ground handling needs to be really really nice and easy.
Very forgiving.
It should be responsive yet forgiving
and I found the Epsilon,
I actually found the ground handling really hard to fault.
I was trying to think of some faults about it
and I honestly am really struggling to do that.
The general behaviour is getting towards
what I will call perfect for the classic glider.
- Yeah. - And just very, very easy
and so building the walls really easy,
holding the glider down is nice and easy.
- Yes. - But I did find,
so there we are, did find that when the wind's stronger,
just using the brakes, harder to hold the glider down,
it wanted to come up and fly
and then I definitely wanted to take at least a wrap,
but using the rear rises is a much better thing to do
rather than taking wraps.
Don't ever do that thing of wrapping and wrapping, wrapping
around the brakes.
It doesn't really work and then you end up
with your brake lines stuck in your hands.
- Yeah, yeah.
- Yeah and then the inflation, how did you find
up inflation? - Yeah, the inflation
comes up progressively.
I found I really could control it putting it to one side,
putting it across, it really sort of,
you could feel what was going on with the wing
and you could really communicate
or you could feel the communication
from the glider to where it's going,
so that you can just hold it with a break.
It felt very intuitive.
- Yeah, I really agree with what you're saying
about the feeling of control.
That's the thing I really noticed about it.
If I, so doing the launch perfectly,
just pulling up with a nice breeze, easy to control,
but if I tried, for example on purpose
to kind of pull the gilder up a bit too hard
and make it come up quick,
it had a really good control with the brakes
where I could easily, just by stepping towards the glider
and pulling a little bit of brake,
I could adjust the speed of the glider really well
without stalling it or it whipping up
and coming up too fast.
So I think that's what I really noticed,
that's the thing that makes it - Yeah.
- So nice to ground handle.
It's that, the speed as it comes up,
just by stepping towards the glider or using the brake
is very controllable
and the glider doesn't have any tendency to just,
to keep dropping back.
It wants to keep coming up to fly.
- Yes, oh the playing around kiting with it,
actually is really about,
I think that's where the playfulness,
I really feel like home. - Yeah.
- Oh this is really just sort of nice to have.
It was really just kind of,
you could play with it
and have a lot of fun and- (roaster crows)
- There was a bit where we were filming
and we were gonna just do a little bit of kiting
and just like to get a bit of ground hand flying
and stuff like that
and we both were just carried on playing around,
running about playing and messing about,
because it's so much fun
to play with. - Yes It was.
Yeah, definitely.
- So now we're gonna launch,
- Launch. - We're gonna take off now.
- Right, yeah.
- You're still on the ground.
Let's get off the ground, let's get in the air.
It lifts off really nicely.
Did you notice that?
It's kind of, as the glider comes up,
you give it a little bit of speed
because the glider is very pitch stable,
but not in a kind of hanging back way.
It just sits nicely above your head
as you run off the glider is in a nice position above you.
So as you run off with it,
it's got a really nice glide and lift
and I found myself just lifting off on the ground
really easily every time.
- Yes, I do agree with that actually.
It's sort of almost something that I hadn't noticed,
but as you're saying it, it actually does ring true
because if was a few times where,
sometimes I would actually normally have had a kind of,
oh, a jerk or a bit more of a run-
- [Carlo] You have that thing with the glider,
some glider you kind of run off and they kind of drop back
and pitch forward and - Yeah.
- Or also, the other thing is it's very stable in the role,
so it sat there, so as I was running off
I even was being a little bit numptyish on purpose, honest
and not doing my launches perfectly
and the glider was forgiving that,
it was sitting nicely above my head.
Not pitching backwards and forwards or rolling around.
and that is the difference
between a gladder that just lifts you off the hill nicely
and one that doesn't.
- [Nancy] You can feel the glider,
you can feel what's going on - Yeah.
- In the air. - Just a nice
level of feedback.
- [Nancy] Yeah, good level of feedback.
- They're also very calm.
- Yes and they're not that, not too busy, not too chatty,
not too sort of,
(Nancy panicking)
(Nancy laughs)
Wanna go and land feeling. (laughs)
- Yeah. I've been really enjoying flying the Upsilon DLS.
- Yeah. - I've really enjoyed
the flights we've had in the conditions,
just it's a real pleasure to thermal.
It's a pleasure just soaring and playing around on the hill,
isn't it? - Yeah.
I find it really pleasurable.
The handling is really nice.
I do think advance with this latest generation of gliders,
the IOTA DLS and previously the Sigma 11
and now the Epsilon DLS,
they seem to have really got a nice balance,
a nice sort of, the handling has just got
a really nice feeling, it's very direct,
it's very precise and direct and progressive.
You can feel exactly where the lift is as well.
The feedback is really nice - Yeah, yeah.
- [Carlo] And the glider's turning, they're agile, isn't it?
- It's it's Agile. - Agile.
Yeah and it is, it turns progressively.
Doesn't dig in, but it's-
- Doesn't roll, yeah. - Doesn't roll and deep-
- Turns nice and flat.
- Yeah it turns flatly,
but it's not that boring kind of dampened feeling.
It is your, it's got that playfulness.
I think it's a really,
yeah. - But it does
the playfulness without being,
it's not the kind of go-kart playfulness
that we sometimes have with say the Skywalk TEQUILA4,
which was very playful, a very playful glider
but quite rolly and also had a tendency,
if you put it into a spiral,
it would go well turn, a tight turn,
it would go into a spiral.
The Epsilon DLS, they've managed to get
a very playful feeling and it's kind of intuitive,
the handling and you can turn very directly.
- [Nancy] Yeah, yeah.
- But it doesn't roll excessively
and so the glider is turning flat,
but also turning quite tightly.
It's a glider that you can thermal really, really well
and again, you know,
flying with some very good pilots today,
on some high performance gliders
and I felt like the Epsilon DLS
loaded about three quarters of the way up the weight range
and it was climbing really, really well.
I think it climbs really nicely.
It's a glider that's really good for thermally
and a very good climb rate.
- Yeah. - Did you find that?
- I was certainly was finding that, yes, I was getting,
yeah, very good sink rate and flying around nicely,
but still had the penetration as well,
so yeah. - Yeah.
Gliding repeatedly with some other gliders.
I think it glides really well.
I think it's very good for the class.
I think it's one of the better gliders in the low B class
and keeping up with the mid Bs.
So I think it's got really good glide performance.
- [Nancy] Yeah.
- So the speed bar again, today I did the speed bar a lot
on every single glide I did upwind,
I did at least a third to half bar,
but I did quite a few glides
where I just held on full speed bar.
I, one thing I forgot to do is to look at my GPS
to get an idea of the speed increase,
but it felt good for the class.
It definitely felt pretty good for the class.
It was, had a really good increase of speed.
So I'm guessing that means it's gotta be at least
around 12 kilometres an hour, 14 kilometres an hour
and I also noticed it's kept its glide really well,
even at full speed.
So the sync rate did obviously increase,
but the efficiency felt really, really good
and I noticed the leading edge kept its shape really well.
- Very clean.
- Yeah, it didn't have,
like some gliders get a lot of dimples
falling them and they start to flutter
and feel edgy and nervy and not at all
with the Epsilon DLS, it feels really solid.
- [Nancy] Yeah, I found, yeah found the same
nice and solid feeling.
- Testing out the agility of the Epsilon DLS
and the sort of fun factor as well
and pushing it a little bit outside of the normal envelope.
So I did some fairly big wing overs on it today,
just trying to see what's it like
for doing that sort of thing
and that's not every Epsilon DLS pilot
is going to be doing that kind of thing,
but I do think some pilots do like that, want a low B glider
and then it's fun to fly and that's kinda agile
and I found it really good for doing some really quite,
quite big wing overs.
It built up energy. Feels really on rails.
I was able to really enjoy myself
doing some very nice coordinated wing overs
and it was a real pleasure doing that.
So it's a really fun glider from that point of view.
I also did some collapses on the glider,
some big collapses frontal and asymmetrics.
To be honest, that's all covered in the tests
but it's interesting to try it out
and real life just for the rises
and it's very well behaved for the class.
Really, really definitely a low B glider.
The stall point, the Epsilon DLS,
I did some search for stall
and just, if you're holding the bottom of the brake handles,
you can reach the stall point by pulling it down,
but it feels kind of a bit on the longest side.
So it's, you generally are gonna hold it
with a half wrap or something like that aren't you,
or take a wrap like that and then you can easily reach,
you know quite easily reach the stall point,
but there's lots of warning for it.
The pressure builds up quite a bit and it's a delay.
It's really obvious the stall point I felt.
What did you think?
- Yeah, I mean actually though,
we haven't talked that much about,
actually the brake pressure.
- Oh yeah. - As an overall thing and-
- Oh yes.
- I would say it's on the lighter side.
- Yeah. - But also,
but also very precise.
- Yes, yeah. - It's that,
some of it is light, not heavy, precise.
Yeah, you really can feel you're getting the turn
and you can, it's talking to you.
It's telling you where it needs to be
and, yeah. - Yeah the brake pressure
is one of the lightest of the low B gliders.
It's got light handling, but very precise and informative.
Like you say, it's not, some gliders can be light and vague,
but actually no, the Epsilon DLS has got really light,
pretty light breaks.
I mean, not super light, - No.
- So the, it's not like this - No,
it's talking to you. - You've got some
pressure there, - It's telling, yeah.
- But relatively speaking,
I think it might be about the lightest brake pressure
of the low Bs.
- [Nancy] Yeah. Yeah.
- And, but together
with that real precision of handling as well so,
and that agility, that nimble kind of handling.
So that's really nice.
- Yeah and big ears just as a,
something to say as well about the big ears
Very nice line that you can identify.
- Yeah, with the split As.
- Split A, yeah.
So it's right there and they just,
they come in well don't they?
They just roll in nicely.
Good size without having to faff too much.
You've got yet decent size, big ears and-
- [Carlo] And they're very stable, aren't they?
- Don't, yes. - I Didn't,
- No Flapping - I did big ears
repeatedly on it and they just pop.
- Yeah. Yeah.
- Very well behaved.
- Very well behaved
and then, and equally when you've finishing
with your big ears, pof, pof, out.
- Yeah, you just let go - Yeah.
- And they just came out on their own
and then I didn't find them really physical
to hold any so- - No, it wasn't physical
at all. - Little bit of pressure
pulling them in, but not really high and holding them in,
so yeah, even the big ears seem to be really nicely done
and a good, good descent rate.
Not a big increase in descent rate, but good
and with the, but then adding
the speed bar on. - Speed bar, yeah,
- [Carlo] I did that as well
and I could really see when I was gliding next to you.
- Yes. - And I did big ears
and with full speed bar, then my sync rate increased
quite a lot. - Yes, yeah.
- The Epsilon DLS for me feels very much
like it's the low B version of the IOTA DLS.
- So who are you going to recommend this for?
- Epsilon DLS in a nutshell-
- In a nutshell, I enjoyed it.
It's a lovely wing.
It's definitely playful and fun
and I do think it's just a lovely glider
for a lot of pilots.
- Yeah, just a really lovely, very sorted,
perfectly pitched low B wing,
a real pleasure to fly with really excellent performance
and I could fly it, I could fly an Epsilon DLS loads
and really enjoy myself
on it. - Yeah.
- Actually I'd like what you said,
it was a good point you made about Epsilon pilots,
'cause we have had a few, we have got a few of them.
- We have, yeah. - We've got a few customers
that over the years have carried on flying Epsilons
since the Epsilon seven at least.
- Yes.
- And they've carried on
and they might have skipped a generation,
but when they come back round again,
they've ended up once again going for an Epsilon,
because they're just so happy,
- Yeah. - With the package
that they get and we have already had some pilots
who were flying the Epsilon nine before
and now they've upgraded to the Epsilon DLS
and they're very happy, that's for sure.
- Yeah. (laughs) Yes.
- Yeah, one of them today is kind of
bounding around the hill saying, how happy he is
with the Epsilon DLS, so I think that says it all really.
- It does say it all. It's a lovely wing.
- Yeah. Okay, slightly funny story.
I'm gonna tell you this.
So I was having so much fun that I thermal up and thought
"Oh look, I can see home from here"
and I would glide off home and then I landed
and realised that I had both of the car keys,
both of the van keys with me.
- Yes.
We had just made a plan that we were gonna fly around,
finish off the flying
so that we can come and film
and do this together. - Yeah.
So that it wouldn't end up being really late
like it is now. - It's now.
I think we're done
on that note. - I think we're done.
- We really hope you've enjoyed this review
of the Advanced Epsilon DLS.
- And we look forward to seeing you in the next video.
- Bye. - Bye.
(upbeat music)