thanks Hans, I'll sure do that, hopefully soon
Funnily enough, I've had 2 Falcos before, flew the last one, HB-UOD, for some 7 years before coming back to aluminum...
I found the Falco having about the same performance top speed wise, but with a higher stall and approach speed. This resulted in my "minimum" no obstacles runway length on the Falco being 400m vs 200m for the -6.
The retracts were finicky, alway happy to have the greens after having moved that switch down
This in turn prevented operating off grass, but for the best surfaced greens.
Control harmony was (gotta be real careful what I write here
) slightly better than the Van's I know of, better harmony and a slightly heavier pitch.
But the Falco stall can be interesting... not to be done at low level, very easy to get a secondary stall.
Final thoughts, Falco vs RV-6 (having now flown both for approx 650hrs):
- the Falco wins easily on looks being the most sexy single engine aircraft on the planet, period (just look at those wings)
- the Falco has a slight edge in handling, but loose that advantage in stall characteristics
- on performance the RV wins, by a wide margin. Not for top speed (same HP the RV is slightly faster), but on speed ratio
- the RV wins on simplicity
- and the Vans win on building time by a wide margin... count about 9K hours on a Falco with the kits (not available anymore AFAIN)