Apco Force.
I had the fortune to test fly Marcus's Apco Force (S) yesterday for the first time. I am going to give you a personal account of my flight of the wing.
To start off I was using the New Instinct from Nirvana that Marcus had purchased and was doing its first flight with the motor unit and also the first powered flight on his Apco force (S).
I did a forward launch with the wing due to the lack of sufficient wind for a reverse launch. The wing came up light and was very stable. The brake lines were a little soft on the pull up but once I added power and to the motor and leaned back on the prop they stiffened up and I ran further than I should have because we had set the trims a fraction to fast on the neutral setting. This wing could be launched on about closed 2. The lift off was good but the wing is small and the lines feel short on the small so there is a tendency for the wing to roll to the right after launch on the belt driven motor. But not enough to be a concern to a pilot with a few hours of flying time. I throttled back to save the motor as it was doing its first flight and needed to be looked after during it’s first hours of flying. I closed both trims and was surprised to find I could not see the numbers that are printed on the trims. It looks like they were put on back to front. This did not influence the flying though. The wing responded very well and climbed well. I then using only the breaks started to do small wing-overs and she behaved like all small wings should nice responsive and keeping its energy in the turns, but fount the breaks to be a little tight. I then took only the tip steering controls and found the wing came alive in the same wing-overs. I was shocked that it was so alive. Then I looked at the wing while doing the same control inputs and found that the tip pulls a lot of the trailing edge of the wing thus making it so responsive. My initial thoughts were then this is not a tip steering system but rather an alternative steering system. This got me thinking about the wing at full reflex flying. If you are in full reflex then this system is going to destroy the reflex of the wing tips and could cause you to get collapses on the outer wing under hard turns. Just my thoughts at this stage. Unfortunately my speed bar was too short for my to get my foot onto it but I opened the trims and the speed increase was minimal in comparison to other wings I fly. I think all the speed is in the speed bar system that I was not able to test. I closed trim again and played with the outer A-riser. I was able to collapse the outer tips of the wing with an aggressive pull on the riser and then the wing popped right back out I did this a number of times and the wing behaved well until I managed to get it to tuck and stay in for a second or so then the wing did an aggressive turn to the direction of the collapsed wing. To be fair I had to pull really hard to make it do this. I did not have enough time to test a full asymmetric collapse on the wing though but would love to try. I then tested the same with the trims fully open and the reflex worked perfectly. You can try your hardest and the wing does not take a collapse. There is one distinct difference between the Apco and the Dudek, Ozone & Paramania wings though. In this trim open position I was able to pull the outer A-riser with not too much effort. The other wings require you to wear a good set of gloves because I normally end up with bleeding finger nails during this test. The other wings have so much pressure on the risers that it is almost not possible to get them pulled.
This is why I also think the full reflex of the Force is only active once under full speed bar.
Landing was a non event and all in all I like the wing. Apco did well on the force but some small refinements like putting the trims the right way around to see the numbers would be nice. Looking at the risers they look similar in design to those from Dudek with the Anti-torque attachments and the numbered trims.
Nice wing though.
Tony
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South African National PPG Team 
