Calima RC glider from Robbe, First Flights

Calima, RC glider with 3.85m to 4.30m wing span

Assembled the PNP version of the Calima Glider from Robbe in an afternoon including the making of wing and fuselage protective covers and programing the Tx.
First flights were made at the Osceola Flyers RC field near Orlando, FL. Not actually living in FL I had some limitatios, space to build, tools, transport space to the field (was originally thinking of a 5 to 6m glider at, in PNP version, not an easy task to find) Not expecting too much from this glider I ordered from an Austrian retailer I was surprised of it’s reasonable performance, gentle stall behaviour and absents of tip stalls. The only slight modification I made was a 20 degrees bend in the flap linkage and deepening the linkage channel on the trailing edge by about 3mm to guarantee 90 degree flap controll for effective crow braking and emergency exits of strong thermals. Put crow controll on a slider on my Tx for dosed braking.
The glider comes with winglets and wing span extenders. I did not like much how it behaved with winglets but was surprised how well it performed with the extended wings.
Most climbouts were at approx. 60 to 70% throttle with a 4000mAh 5S lipo. Was pretty satisfied with this setup except the 14x8 stock prop got very noisy at certain RPMs which means that there are some inefficencies. Got already a couple of props from AeroNaut which I’ll take along on my next trip to Florida.
Had to add 120grs of lead to the nose to balance the Calima.
There is enough space to use a higher capacity lipo if one desires instead of flying the lead around.
The glider is well good quality materials and well build. It also arrived without a single wrinkle in the Oracover.
All in all a pleasant surprise. Had a lot of fun with it so far.
RL