Aerobatic whitewash?
Discussion
I think the "American Made Good, German Import Bad" website might have me sold on the Extra. It manages to get the word "Freedom" in just after the last commie-loser German negative is listed. Cringe factor 11 for me I'm afraid. It probably appeals to their target market though.
Edited by jamieduff1981 on Friday 13th January 12:23
jamieduff1981 said:
I think the "American Made Good, German Import Bad" website might have me sold on the Extra. It manages to get the word "Freedom" in just after the last commie-loser German negative is listed. Cringe factor 11 for me I'm afraid. It probably appeals to their target market though.
I wouldn't read too much into it - the designer and co-founder of Game Composites, Philipp Steinbach, is German and I think he's just having a bit of fun at Extra's expense - he originally worked with Walter Extra and tried to persuade him to build an all-composite aircraft, Walter steadfastly stuck with his composite wing / metal tube fuselage structure so Philipp went off and did his own thing with the XtremeAir Sbach 300 and 342. I'd guess there was a wry smile or two when Extra finally went 100% composite with the NG.Edited by jamieduff1981 on Friday 13th January 12:23
I flew with Philipp at Waltham went he first brought a 342 over as a demonstrator, and it absolutely blew the Extra 300 into the weeds - within a year or so there were 2 Sbachs at Waltham brought in by previous Extra 300 owners, and I spent a fair amount of time in the front seat of G-XTME. When Philipp and Stu Walton founded Game Composites they invited a group of aerobatic pilots (and one F1 designer with a few constructors championships under his belt) up to Wickenby for a day to discuss how we thought the 342 could be improved upon, and my input was that for those of us who enjoy our food the dimensions of the front cockpit and arrangement of the stick could prove awkward when trying to go for full back deflection. A year or so later we dropped into Wickenby to see how work was progressing on the prototype, and Philipp pointed out with a grin the shape of the sticks, having an exaggerated outward bend at the bottom, thereby removing the scope for a pie-related control restriction. I think everyone who has experienced the front seat of a 342 would appreciate that the two seater was very much an afterthought, whereas the GB1 was designed as a two-seater from the start.
Which one would I have, GB1 or the Extra NG? - I haven't flown either, just their predecessors, and without doing that it's hard to be completely sure - Game Composites are now very much focussed in the US market, having moved back to Stu Walton's home town in Arkansas, and I think there is only one example in the UK, but knowing the attention to detail and painstaking engineering that went into the GB1 and refining the concept of the SBach, as well as being there at Oshkosh with Stu and Philipp when they launched the GB1 in 2016, then Extra would have had to have done something pretty amazing with the NG compared to the 300 to come close.
The one area where the Extra might have a slight advantage over the Sbach / GB1 style curved wings, the NG still having the straight edge of the 300, and there was some thought that the better definition of attitude this gives the judges in an Aresti competition might lead to marginally better scoring - but in the Unlimited Freestyle the GB1 was designed for that's largely irrelevant.
Edited by eharding on Saturday 14th January 12:32
jamieduff1981 said:
I think the "American Made Good, German Import Bad" website might have me sold on the Extra. It manages to get the word "Freedom" in just after the last commie-loser German negative is listed. Cringe factor 11 for me I'm afraid. It probably appeals to their target market though.
Surely those negatives all outweighed by the “Vertically integrated production” 
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