French Kiss - British Microlight Aircraft Association

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for Blades and Qs. This French machine is possibly even lighter in roll than my own personal two-seater favourite, the Raven. It is quite a good test of roll control to place the machine in a gentle bank and take your hands off the bar. Well-tuned Pegasus wings will eventually reduce the angle of bank without pilot input. Ravens have a tendency to increase the angle of bank until things get scary. This French machine simply sits in the attitude you left it in although, like all flexwings, it requires a handful of opposite control to damp violent roll manoeuvres. There isn't a two-up stall as such. Gently decreasing airspeed by edging the bar up to the front strut simply results in a fully flying machine with ponderous roll response either in bank or level flight. Accelerated entry to the stall does produce a more classic response - a significant symmetrical drop below the horizon which can easily be recovered with carefully controlled rearwards bar movement. Interestingly, an observer in an accompanying chase plane said afterwards that the accelerated stall had looked spectacular 'losing several hundred feet'. I have to say that the manoeuvre did not feel spectacular from the pilot's seat; the positive and progressive pitch response of the Kiss 400 made recovery almost pedestrian. Time to head back to the airfield. The machine was easy to line up for a deliberately long approach: with an examiner of instructors and an exemplary pilot sitting in the back seat, I wanted to do the perfect landing. It wasn't to be. Executing a near perfect approach and sliding down to the threshold as if on rails with 65mph of airspeed on the clock, it looked as though the landing might be a greaser. Enter into the flare and burn off the flying speed at just an inch or two above the grass. All is going well until… you reach the front strut and the wretched machine is still flying with no forward bar movement left to flare with! The back gear gently touches the grass, hits the smallest of bumps, and sends you back a few inches into the air until the wheels touch the next bump. And the next… It was a perfectly acceptable landing but not completely tidy: the front strut places a restriction on forwards bar movement preventing the aircraft from flying right to the stall. This was borne out both by the stalling tests and in a further landing. Time to go solo with just 300kg of takeoff weight. With such a small, short keeled wing above, it is like climbing into a Chaser. Line up, open the throttle and... Wow! The high power 582 literally catapults you into the air after what seems like no ground run at all. The VSI edges past 1200 fpm and the thin layer of stratocumulus rushes down to meet you in a manner unusual for a microlight. Actually, the machine is climbing at such a wonderfully crazy angle that sky is really all you see, even with 50mph on the ASI. Oops. Extract myself from the cloud and try to be a tiny bit professional. Flown one-up the machine feels entirely different. True, it exhibits the climb performance of a sky rocket but what really stand out are changes in roll and pitch. Although both axes remain positive and convergent, they reduce significantly to the point where, if you were to shut your eyes, you could be flying a hot single-seater. You can throw the machine about, point it at any place in the sky or on the ground and go there directly and precisely. Wonderful stuff. This machine really does become a weightshift fighter aircraft. A more measured appraisal suggests a neutral bar trim of 58mph with the engine turning at 4700rpm for level flight - a fast solo cruise would probably be possible with a fuel consumption in the region of 10 litres/hour giving an easy endurance of 300 miles on that big 60 litre tank. Pass me the Little John. Pulling the bar right in puts 75mph on the ASI with the machine still capable of going upwards but the rearwards bar force required to sustain this would soon become uncomfortable. Pushing the bar gently out to the front strut once again fails to stall this machine. It simply grumbles along at 40mph or thereabouts. An accelerated stall entry once again produces a definite but easily recovered stall. The lowest sink rate on a trailing throttle would be about 500fpm at 45mph. And back for a solo landing. Once again, everything travels down on rails to the runway threshold resulting in a textbook flare. And once again, I run out of forward bar movement before flying speed has properly decayed resulting in a bump, bump, bump. Would I want to buy one? Oh yes, even if it is a bit of pain to put back on the ground cleanly. The Kiss 400 really does have a dual personality. As a small two-seater it outhandles the competition in most respects - it would have been interesting to fly this machine in heavy turbulence. The high wing loading might confer some advantage, possibly offset by the light
oll characteristics. As a single seater hot ship, it wipes the floor with everything else that I have ever flown. This really is a machine that is whatever you want it to be. Get Your Kit Built Flylight only supplies the Air Creation Kiss 400 as a kit requiring typically about 100 hours of build time. The machine arrives in five boxes of various sizes containing absolutely everything needed for a complete machine. All the members are pre-cut and drilled and individually labelled. In essence, putting a Kiss 400 together is a straight Meccano job. The only drilling required is for a set of self-tap screws to attach the seat webbing. Construction has to be overseen through the BMAA inspector network with inspections taking place at rolling chassis, wing/airframe completion and after final assembly. TECHNICAL DATA Flylight Kiss 400 582 MANUFACTURER Air Création, Aérodrome de Lanas, 07200 Aubenas, France; tel +33 47593 6666; fax +33 47535 0403;. Director: Jean-Luc Tilloy. IMPORTER Flylight Airsports, Sywell Aerodrome, Northampton NN6 0BT; tel 01604 494459; fax 01604 495007. Proprietors: Paul Dewhurst, Ben Ashman. SUMMARY Tandem two seat flexwing aircraft with weight-shift control. Rogallo wing with neither fin nor keel pocket. Pilot suspended below wing in trike unit, using bar to control pitch and roll/yaw by altering relative positions of trike unit and wing. Wing braced from above by kingpost and cables, from below by cables; floating cross-tube construction with 80% double-surface enclosing cross-tube; 22 battens on top surface, 14 battens on under-surface. Undercarriage has three wheels in tricycle formation; gas damped shock absorber suspension on all three wheels. Push-right go-left nosewheel steering independent from aero-dynamic controls. Drum brake on nosewheel. Rectangular-section aluminium-alloy tube trike unit, with glassfibre pod. Engine mounted below wing, driving pusher propeller. EXTERNAL DIMENSIONS & AREAS Length overall (to tips) 3.90m, 12.8ft. Height overall 3.57m, 11.7ft. Wing span 10.20m, 33.5ft. Chord at root NA. Chord at tip NA. Dihedral NA. Nose angle 130°. Wing area 13.3m 2 , 143ft 2 . Aspect ratio 7.5/1. Wheel track 1.63m, 5.3ft. Wheelbase 1.60m, 5.2ft. Main wheels dia overall 36cm, 14 in. Nosewheel dia overall 36cm, 14 in. POWER PLANT Rotax 582 DCDI engine, liquid-cooled. Max power 64hp at 6500rpm. Propeller diameter and pitch 1.70m x 23°@50.5cm radius, 67 inch x 23°@20 inch radius. Gearbox reduction, ratio
Page 1 and 2: French Kiss Frank Ogden The Kiss is
Page 3 and 4: There is a serious point about fuel
Page 5: 23 top surface and 12 undersurface

French Kiss - British Microlight Aircraft Association

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