Wednesday morning we all headed out to the beach below Hill 60 in Port Kembla, south of Wollongong, hoping to compare the Moyes Malibu 188 and Airborne Fun 190, as well as fly the Moyes Malibu 166 prototype. Gerolf had proposed the expedition and Curt Warren and Louise from Warren Windsports were more than up for it supplying three Malibu's and a Fun.

The Seabreeze forecast (see the Oz Report weather page - Oz Weather) was for 20 knots northeast winds, plenty high for the 25 to 50 foot high site, but probably a bit strong for flying the Malibu in light conditions, where it is designed to be the superior glider. This beach is not really a dune gooning site, something the Malibu is built to excel at, but rather a small ledge over a flat rocky area below in or just above the water (as the tide goes out).

The tide was in when we got there at 11:30 AM and the wind was as strong as forecast and quite gusty. I looked over the edge and saw some rocks but mostly water. No beach to land on safely. Not my idea of dune gooning fun. Check it out on Google Maps or Earth at the coordinates above.

Flying the gliders was really not a problem in that much wind. Despite what it looks like to a mostly inland pilot like me, you are not going to land when you are only 25 feet above the rocks. The wind is just too strong to let you fall down as long as you are reasonably competent at handling the glider and the glider is agile.

Fortunately, the Malibu 188 is a very agile glider and I had no problem flying and top landing it in the gusty conditions. It was quite possible to come in over the launch area and hover down, although most of the time I came in down the slot, paralleling the road, and just straight armed the glider to the ground at the take off point.

I was supposed to see if I could tell any difference between the two gliders flying them in quick succession. I hadn't flown an Airborne Fun since last March (and that was at Dalby) so it was hard to remember what it flew like. Well, I was unable to tell if there was much of a difference between the two gliders. The Malibu seemed a bit more agile, but in the gusty conditions it was almost impossible to tell.

It also seemed that the Malibu flew slower for the same push out (I flew two different Malibu 188's and they both seemed to fly slower when pushed out about the same, even though they were trimmed to different positions) than the Fun 190. I noticed this as I would go backward in the Malibu's but not in the Fun when flying at the eastern edge of the small ridge.

Since I was not able to fly the Malibu in the conditions that it is supposed to excel in (very light lift where other gliders can't stay up) I wasn't able to test its primary claim to fame. In fact, at this site I would be way too scared to try given that there wasn't a nice beach below me. I would be excited to try it at Redhead where the ocean is a long ways away and there is gentle sand below.

I flew the 166 prototype and it has a ways to go especially in slow flight. I found it harder to turn that the 188, and Gerolf says he still has work to do on the tips, etc. to get it to fly the way the 188 does.

There is a lot of enthusiasm for the Malibu. There were five of them there at the beach. Jim Feiser US (Washington state) pilot who comes to Oz to do tandems, is a big fan, and he was flying his Malibu with us. He feels that it is a very agile glider.