[First of all, the end: I landed the glider much earlier than expected. It had a very good glide ratio, often even above 70:1, but there was little time in real life to climb right at the start of the flight and I was counting on a path with more rising air. In addition, there was an unforeseen event during the transmission and I had to go off the stick, which made me deviate a lot from the course and head thewind, losing altitude unnecessarily – besides MSFS’ old bug of changing local and Greenwich times. It was an easy emergency landing, in an open field.
Verdict on the aircraft: It’s a good glider, with excellent glide ratio, but requires a lot of elevator control and is quite sensitive at the rudder. It can be tiring to spend a long time climbing a thermal with it.]
02:44 Take-off
07:30 Cable released
33:27 Cruise
39:00 Start of task
45:14 “Look, mommy! Without the hands!”
47:00 Back in command
51:24 Looking for a place to land
51:59 Landing
In this live stream we will test Madolo’s Jonkers JS3 glider, available for free at flightsim.to. It is a racing glider with an 18m wingspan and water ballast, with similar performance to the AS-33 (a motor glider also available at MSFS 2020 by Madolo). We’ll use Floyd’s Epic Clouds Glider (harder) weather preset. In addition to our first flight on the Jonkers JS3, there will be another new feature: I’ll be commenting on the live video! Please let us know in the comments if you like the new format!
We will take advantage of the test to fly in a beautiful region of Brazil, leaving the city of Caldas Novas, famous for its thermal waters, and arriving in Itumbiara, further south, right after the dam that bears the name of the city. On the left, we will initially have the Corumbá River and then the Parnaíba River, which forms the border between the states of Goiás and Minas Gerais. At the beggining, we will have on the right the Serra de Caldas Novas State Park, where the thermal springs that bathe the Goiás municipalities of Rio Quente and Caldas Novas are located.