Ellipse "Next" hang glider demo/test flight (with telemetry)

First demo/test flight on the new high end intermediate from Ellipse called "Next".

Oh and the real pro in the sky with me (around 1:00 into the video) is a Red Kite. Sharing a thermal with such a majestic creation always makes a flight so much more special!

Note - the speeds shown are GPS speeds so ground-speed not airspeed.

Ellipse are a French manufacturer who are not only one of the few remaining HG manufacturers but their head man, Jean-Marc has been at the helm and hands on with each glider build right from the early pioneering days of HG all the way through to the current day so he is the longest serving builder of hang gliders in the world!

Firstly – what is the build quality like? The sail-work is impeccable. You can tell these guys have been working at this artform for a long time! The sail cut is very obviously quite different to all the other double surface gliders around at the moment. The trailing edge is almost ram-rod straight with (ironically considering the manufacturers name) very little ellipse to it at all and the planform is much more ‘delta’ than the other manufactures are using with what looks like a much sharper nose angle.

The frame work seems very well put together as well but is very different to the other big manufacturers and feels rather pleasingly ‘French’, albeit maybe a little dated compared to the fittings on the other modern gliders. The French are known for making very nicely flying aircraft in lots of different categories so this bodes well! Not only are the bar corners etc unique to Ellipse but they have also done some other areas their own way. And they are all positive!

A bit a like the Gecko, the Next seems to take a bit more effort to get it initially turning (vs gliders like the Sport 3 and Alto) but once rolling it has a surprisingly good roll rate and sits banked up in thermals much more purposefully than the more beginner friendly gliders. It was quite easy to over-roll the Next and it would get to an alarming bank angle very quickly and then took a serious shift in the opposite direction, first arrest the increasing roll rate and then reversing it. I also found that over a certain bank angle (possibly 45-50 degrees) it took a stab of high-side at intervals to stop it rolling in even tighter. At lesser bank angles it seems to lock in to that bank angle and wont change unless you tell it to (or it gets displaced by movement in the air).

Pulling on VG was nice and easy. The VG cleat on the demo glider was a bit awkward but it has a non-standard base bar and cleat on it. The normal cleat on the standard ally aerofoil base bar is the same as the one Wills Wing use which I quite like the function of in flight (although I know it isn’t everyone’s cup of tea).

At full VG the glider is again much more like the Gecko than the Sport 3 and flies straight as a die like it is on rails. You can tell that this glider is designed to really go places. Bar pressure on full VG is nice and light and you could fly at all but bar fully stuffed for a long time without fatigue. But I did find it incredibly easy to provoke the glider into PIO on fast glides. This is a flaw with the pilot not the glider (it is PILOT induced oscillation after all!) but is another reason I say the glider is definitely aimed at the more experienced pilot who really wants to go places. A pilot flying one as a first double surface would find it very hard to get even half the best out of it before reaching the limit of their skill.

Coming in to top land at Combe Gibbet (a fairly technical top landing site) was no issue at all with the glider not changing in pitch at all in the transition to upright and then staying just as easily controllable upright as prone (some gliders suffer lesser roll authority when upright). Due to the top landing at Combe bringing you onto final with a touch of cross-wind it is sometimes good to kick just into wind a bit more (to the right in the vid) before touchdown. I overdid the roll input on this and the timing meant that I was then flaring and so the wing that I had then just commanded to go up (to correct my over-roll) stalled but it was no-issue at all showing that even abused a bit in landing the Next will still look after you.

In conclusion - I would need to fly it more but from this initial shakedown I would say the Next has a lot of potential in amongst the other modern intermediate offerings. It is definitely a higher end intermediate and so not suitable to a beginner or even really as a first double surface even for someone with lots of time on a single surface. Ellipse have a low end double surface intermediate called the ‘Windee’ as their entry-level offering which is now high on my list of gliders to try one day!

Glider: Ellipse “Next” side M – clip in at 88kg (194lbs)
Harness: Rotor Vulto
Vario: Digifly AirPro-Pitot
Helmet: Icaro Nerv

Site: Combe Gibbet – south of England

ellipse-delta.com/en
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