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I got some requests off-line to report on my trip today, so here it
is. I just walked in the door at home after my trip up to Santa
Margarita to visit the home of the ThunderGulls. It was a six hour
trip up and a six hour trip back with about a two hour visit at
Mark's place. So I am pretty tired and will try to make this short.
First of all I want to say that I was VERY impressed with the Odyssey
that Mark took me up in. The demo plane has an HKS engine and a Duc
propeller, and climbed and cruised quite fast. Mark mentioned that he
had recently flown 300 miles on 8 gallons of fuel with that setup. He
took me through the usual stall execises and I was really impressed
that it just keeps flying with continued aileron effectiveness, with
full aft stick ,with no real departure stall break. When he did
force it into a stall break, it recovered with the stick still held
back, and resumed the climb after it recoverd from the break!
I went there hoping to decide whether I would like to get the Gull2K
or the Odyssey, but it is still hard to decide, although I am leaning
more toward the Odyssey now. It has SO much room to take stuff along
on a trip, and it's fuel burn rate is really great with it setup the
way the demo plane is. Mark also had a J there that he is selling on
consignment for a customer, so I had a chance to compare the storage
capacity between the 2. The Gull2K has plenty of nooks and crannys
for taking stuff on a trip, but the J has the big space behind the
seat which is very nice. For me, the J seemed a little cramped in
side to side room, while the 2K was much better in that respect.
We had some pretty good thermals while flying in the Odyssey, and I
was amazed at how stable that Gull was when getting bumped around by
the thermals. I REALLY like the flying qualities of ThunderGull
aircraft!!!!!
I also got to see Mark's Rad-Cam engine while I was there. At sixty
pounds for sixty horsepower and a 400 RPM idle, I really hope he gets
that engine into production some day.

Got to get some sleep now. If anyone wants any further impressions I
would be happy to oblige.

--Dave