The Carat is a true 15 meter soaring sailplane and it has the potential to do a 1000 km flight.
They will be two attempts on the 1000k soaring flight this summer with a Carat. The first will be at Minden, Nevada from July 10th to July 20th. The second will be at Taos, New Mexico, from August 21 to August 31. We figure on being on site for about 10 days for each attempt.
Oliver Dyer-Bennet.
Carat is a winning combination of a self-launching sailplane and a 15-meter glider with high performance in either flight regime. Pete Williams coined the phrase, "Best of both Worlds", for the Carat around the time he was getting ready to fly the Carat for the first time. No other single place 15-meter powered sailplane is capable of this type of dual performance. No problem of power plant mast deployment. The Carat is a Motorglider but it obviously has a lot more performance than typical TMG.
The Carats flight envelope, high performance single place soaring, combined with the ability to quickly power up and fly long distances at fast and economical air speeds, allows the Carat to stand in a unique, and special position among sailplanes. This allows the pilot to "power cruise" at 120 mph for up to 700 miles or he can secure the engine, fold the propeller and soar on a Schempp-Hirth Discus wing.
More Carat’s contest on the On-Line Contest (OLC) regularly.
We are working on a 3-part article for Soaring Magazine. The 1st part would be written by John Joss, J2, and would cover the concept and origin of the Carat at Technoflug and the relation of the Carat to the Schempp-Hirth Discus. The 2nd part would be written by Bill Collum, see March 2010 Soaring magazine, and would cover the mechanical nuts and bolts of the Carat and his impressions of how the Carat flys, both as a glider and a powered aircraft. The 3rd part would be a full flight test of the Carat by the DGA in Dallas, Texas.
Oliver Dyer-Bennet & AMS Flight Team
