Corona-delayed, and a long wait, but she’s there. The Chocofly JS3, fully moulded, 5.14m wingspan, empty weight around 4.2kg. On Monday we picked up three JS for me and two friends in our building team. Ours are the first production builds of the lighter version (production nr. 3, 4 and 5), but wings are still very stiff and their torsional strength is better than our own scratch-built versions.

The Chocofly version is closely based on our scratch-built JS3. Chocofly has used the same wing and control surface profile and layout (all by Georg Staub, who also designed the “small” Diana2 and SB-14). The only difference is that the 5.14m version has “only” three control surfaces, rather than the four in our JS3. The fuselage is stunning, and based on original CAD data. Chocofly has a record number of orders for this plane, and the waiting list is huge. But it’s a beauty and I know it will fly very well – my scratch-built JS3 was my most-flown plane in 2020 and already has clocked up a couple of hours of airtime in 2021.

I’m deeply impressed by the quality of the build. I’ll be building mine with a small retractable JETEC E70, running on 6S. Unfortunately this means that I cannot fly it on our local club airfield (no turbines allowed), but I can fly it at the other club that I’m a member of in Gossau and of course on the slope. I’ve been dreaming of getting a glider with JETEC, and the fuselage is so beautiful that I just cannot bring myself to hack the nose off this one. Haven’t decided yet if I’ll add a landing gear – this will depend on whether there is enough space in the fuselage once the JETEC is installed, and the weight of the plane. Aim is to keep the take-off weight at around 6 kilos at most (my scratch-built one is 6.3kgs, which flies great).