While the BioniX is very easy to fly and land, I have found that it needs some practice to get the best out of it. The slow speed handling is fantastic, but on my short strip it needs some thought. I found that on a couple of landings, I was coming in too high. The natural thing to do is to pull the bar in a little, but what happens is that the speed increases and so does the lift. The trick is to push the bar out further. It will not stall in the same way as a normal wing, but will lose height and come down like a helicopter, with very little forward speed.
I have played a bit with the higher speeds, and have flown hands off at 80 mph (130kph). Even with the bigger windscreen this gets quite noisy and find that about 70 to 75 is more comfortable.
We flew back from Domme last Sunday afternoon. It was a hot afternoon after a very cool night. There was plenty of moisture in the ground and the cumulus clouds were building. Flying back at between 2000 and 5000 feet was very turbulent, but I can say that the BioniX is much better behaved than the iXess 15 was. Had we been flying the iXess then I suspect that my wife would have had me land at Gallinat halfway home as she does not like the bumpy air!
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