I’ve been flying with the Top Rudder Solo a fair bit in the past couple weeks as it’s great for VR.
However, I don’t know if its Asobo updates have broken it, or maybe this is just really how it handles but its a combination of death trap on the ground and useless in the air.
If there is anything more than a 6 knot wind the plane will be rolling backwards down the runway even before I press to start the flight. I have to quickly put my headset on, centre my position and slam the brakes on before I crash even before I’ve started. Does this thing not have a hand brake in real life?
The on the ground handling is most politely described as treacherous. Try turning at anything above 1 mph and the plane will topple over. This makes getting to and from a runway incredible tedious as you’ll spend as much time taxiing to the runway as actually in the air if you don’t want to crash before you get there.
Then once in the sky, you better hope the wind is blowing in the same direction you want to go else you’ll never make it there. I flew from Plymouth, Devon in the UK, to Brent Tor airstrip on Dartmoor in live weather. It’s was only a 6 knot wind but it was strong enough that I could barely make progress flying into it. I needed to pitch my nose down to gain enough speed to move forward, but that cost me altitude and when I climbed again I lost thrust and was pushed back, so it was a case of 2 steps forward, 1 step back for the whole tedious flight. I think it would have been quicker to walk.
This experience leaves me questions.
Is this experience accurate?
Is there a better ultralite I can purchase that has the same open cockpit and fantastic views, but doesn’t handle like a kite and I can actually enjoying flying it with a bit of weather?
It is a kit ultra light after all.
500 lbs ish.
No brakes would be accurate.
Max wind speed is probably 20-25 mph and it won’t be “fun” if your in those winds.
Small mod note: I moved the thread out of general discussion into the relevant aircraft discussion area of the forums and removed the thread 30 day autoclose setting.
Yeah this thing is a bit of a kite for sure. I like it, but yeah you do have to fly it like sailing a sailing boat at times - tack with the wind to zig-zag to where you’re going.
If you haven’t tried it yet, I highly recommend this (it’s free, so what do you have to lose…):
I’ve got two other ultralites that fill a similar niche but are overall more powerful:
The V.G.P. Powerstol is extremely similar in looks and layout. It is much more powerful though so you get the same experience of “hanging in the air with nothing but air and slightly glorified wire underneath you”, but will be able to handle wind better. From memory it’s about 50% faster. Unfortunately it seems to be abandonware, I haven’t received any update in the last two years and I don’t think the developer is active anymore. Last I tried it worked fine, but if it ever breaks it will probably stay broken. Another downside would be texturing and modelling. It’s not up to modern standards. To me the visible weldings of the Solo are a major draw and you won’t get that in the V.G.P.
The Ant’s Drifter has a different layout with much better visibility forward, to the side, and up, but at the cost of visibility straight down. It does something like 60 knots and feels quite competent.
With all of the above said, I can’t say that I fully share your experience with the Top Rudder. It handles quite ok on the ground and goes something like 40-50 knots, so whilst a 6 knot headwind will slow you down noticeably, it’s not like it’s a huge difference in real terms. What RPM are you running? If I’m not mistaken this is one of those engines that easily handles 6000+ RPM, I usually fly her at 6500 or slightly above. If you’re trying to run her with as low RPM as you’re probably used to from other planes you won’t get hardly any forward speed at all.
