Mark Stucky <<mpstucky>>
writes:

It's been a long and sad tale but today the LightHawk took the sky again for the
first time in many years. I flew the initial flights in the summer of 2002 and
although the glider flew magically, we suffered potentially serious issues on
all three days that I flew it. On top of that, legal issues came to light and
there was the never ending saga of just who had been promised what. I stepped
away from the program and had not seen the glider again until just a few weeks
ago.

A few years back, Richard Abihabib, one of the original team members on the
first and second prototypes, bought the 1st prototype and reassembled the small
team of volunteers (the major players being Jeff Glover, Dave Swanson, and Mike
Johnston). They set about reworking the glider to address the numerous safety
issues with improvements to the primary and secondary flight controls, the
fuselage, wing box, landing gear and brake, and instrumentation. They also
dotted the i's and crossed the t's with the FAA paperwork.

The team met at El Mirage Dry Lake this morning and with the help of Dan
Armstrong and a few other of my co-workers from Scaled Composites we did a
series of early morning static line auto tows. We then took a break and I
launched again at 10:30 and flew for nearly two hours, coming down only because
it was time to celebrate and many team members had long drives ahead of them.

On today's flights I did level and turning stalls as well as accelerated out to
the maximum allowable speed in all seven flap positions, pulled over 3 g's, and
just generally had fun (including a 5,000 foot altitude gain and a 1500 fpm
spoiler out death spiral to the landing pattern), with smooth spot landings
every time.

It was great to see the beautiful bird soar again and hopefully Richard will
soon be enjoying the fruits of his labors for years to come.