My Monerai is still waiting for its coat of primer before heading off to the paintshop. My mate Richi, who’s built the plug and mould for the Monerai fuselage, already finished his Monerai a while ago. He had the maiden flight yesterday.

We were incredibly lucky with excellent conditions on the “airfield” of his club (Modellfluggruppe Wald), which is a wonderful SW-facing slope with stunning views over lake Zürich. Richi first launched a small glider to check for lift – of which there was plenty. I then launched his Monerai for him.

Maiden flights of an all-new self-built model are always a bit of a gamble. While you can calculate the center of Gravity and incidence, as well as throws, our experience is that these values are mostly less useful than following our instinct and experience. Richi’s instinct and experience proved right – as so often. The Monerai flew wonderfully right from the start – in fact his first flight lasted more than two hours! He will need to experiment a bit with the CG and throws still, but the settings are not far off where we’re likely to end up.

I made a video of the first flight, including start and landing. Between filming I also flew my self-built Ventus 2c for an hour and a half. Pure bliss.