Caldera A

[Scott Ravenscroft]

Has anyone got a Caldera A hidden away or know where there is one to be found, would also like to the know the history of the model too.....

Cheers if anyone knows.

Scott r

[Dr-K]

Hi Scott,

For a Model You may search at F3X com (Tom Cobb) as he took over the rights of Sales.

The Caldera A is a Design by Dieter Perlick and me and was done as an improvement of the Spark 4.

Using the big achievements in airfoil creation and mould making in 2000 we wanted to create a design which fits well to the F3F task but as well gives enjoyable sportsflying.

With the focus on high maneuver ability and my ultimate wish to keep the inverted flying performance we ended up with the 2.66m wingspan and the low camber airfoil of 1.2%.

So looking back the design really works well and we even used it in F3B competitons successfully for some time. The Caldera A is very easy to control on fast track as the airfoil has very low moment - so going straight easily.

The weakness is however the low lift which makes you choosing lower ballast levels than competitors IF conditions are not good.

We found out that despite the Caldera thermals very well with low wing loading and superb launches at no wind , there was a weakness at Cross wind launches which prevents successful using High Wing loadings.

And similar the A performs very well in F3F in good or in very weak conditions, but there is a gap in the middel.

Therefore we came up with the Caldera R in 2009 which keeps key ideas of the A design alive but builds on a higher lift airfoil.

And indeed the R has a noticable higher tolerance of weight and is flown successfully in F3f competitions.

However I still have 2 Caldera A left which I love using for Sports flying. The inverted flying performance may be rather unmatched by other F3f designs.

Cheers,

Peter

[Scott Ravenscroft]

thank you Peter, very informative.....

scott