The Helios and XXLite are excellent, high performance DLGs manufactured in Belgium, and I am glad to say that they are available here in the US!

NEW! Website for the Helios and XXLite! http://www.compositegliders.com/

The Helios excels in 2 areas that are highly criticial to DLG competition. First, the range of this bird is remarkable. No longer will you be afraid that the lift that just blew by you is too far away. In all honesty, what limits the travel range of this plane is your limit of vision. The increased range and penetration will feel MILES beyond anything you were accustomed to. The Helios has excellent penetration coming back home from deep down wind, even in strong head winds. Second, it handles turbulent air very well. A little bit of ballast added, and you can tame some monster wind and still make it back home for a hand catch. Both of these performance characteristics are due to the well balanced design and the very thin Zone V2 foils used for the wing. This foil is revolutionary, there is no other word for it. Don't let the high penetration and ranging fool you though, it is also perfectly at home slowing down to handle low lift/dead air. It does all of this, yet is still a very user friendly bird with easy flight characteristics.

***2013 update*** All Helios produced are now Helios 2. Prices will remian the same as the Helios 1.

The XXLite takes the Helios and goes a step further, more high performance, more radical in design. It's a new and very...Continue Reading

Well, as the SPC predicted on the 15th, we had quite an afternoon here yesterday. I know some people in NC that I fly with were much more impacted, and I'm glad to hear that they are all ok. I took a cruise down the road to see damage from an EF1 that touched down within 10 miles of my house. The path that it was traveling wouldve taken it to within a mile of us had it stayed on the ground, but fortunately the funnel lifted before it came through. The same storm then re-cycled and touched back down in Gloucester VA where they took much more extensive damage and also sadly had loss of life. Here are some pictures I took today from where it hit along the 8 mile damage path. The pictures don't do any justice. Seeing large trees snapped in half and tin roofs folded around tree trunks is pretty surreal....Continue Reading

Simply unbelievable, the last part of the video while on board the gos hawk is actual speed.

Flying with the fastest birds on the planet: Peregrine Falcon & Gos Hawk - Animal Camera - BBC (3 min 2 sec)

XP-5...Continue Reading

Jonas Fuse

Yesterday as a storm was blowing by (missed us by only a mile) some true masters of soaring decided to have fun in what surely would have been total destruction for me. The gust front blew down across the lake I live on and then hit a 70'-80' tree line on the back side, making for some sweet slope lift for these guys to exploit. It was weird actually, before the wind blew, the birds were nowhere to be found. As soon is it picked up, which basically went from a dead stand still to about a 25mph stiff breeze in 3 seconds, they appeared out of the blue almost instantly, running the tree line like they knew exactly where to go. I watched them go at it for close to 30 minutes, without flapping a single beat, and just clearing the trees by only a few feet on a couple of passes. Awesome to say at the least....Continue Reading

Here's some more cool weather stuff. Here are some radar signatures of vortex couplets produced by a tornado in a storm. These are from the tornadoes that hit Arkansas and Tennessee over the weekend.