So whilst at Barton (or City Airport Manchester as it is now pretentiously named) a few days ago I had a wander around and took a look at the other aircraft there. One type definitely caught my eye - a composite construction, high wing, tricycle undercarriage design that just "looked right" - so a few enquiries and what I had been looking at turned out to be a CTSW from Flight Design of Germany. The microlight school at Barton, Mainair, owns & operates G-CERA so a call to their owner & chief instructor Chris Copple who I've known for many years soon had me booked in for a flight.
Here it is, parked on the apron at Barton:
With Chris in the right hand seat, he took me through the pre-flight briefing then we started up and taxied out to the hold for runway 20, did the checks, lined up then full throttle and away we went. WOW - almost before I'd got the throttle fully open we were airborne and climbing out, maintaining 80 kts in the climb and with what seemed an impossible high attitude we saw well over 1,000 fpm on the electronic altimeter. 
Yes that's right - the instruments aren't instruments, it is a flat panel display with a representation of an airspeed indicator and rate of climb - the altitude is shown in digits and by pressing various buttons you can see all manner of information that would traditionally be shown on analogue instruments (and yes those are my feet below the panel!!)
Leaving the circuit we headed out to the North West and did some general handling, straight & level, turns left & right, then a climb and a power off clean stall. I have to report the aircraft handles well, no tendancy to drop the nose in the turn and the stall, at about 40kts, was quite docile with a little buffet and gentle "nod" down of the nose. Push forwards, apply power and the stall recovery was straightfoward with very little height loss.
Then Chris suggested I try a PFL - this from around 2,000' - so I pulled back the power, trimmed for the glide and selected a field, had I been in the Cherokee6 I would have now been starting to sweat, however in the CT the main issue seemed to be to keep choosing another field as we sailed past my first choice then my second one - this aircraft really does want to glide a long way!
Then back to Barton and into the circuit, a standard overhead join, descend and set up an approach to 20 for an intended touch & go which I didn't manage - once again, like the PFL I just couldn't get the height off (once again too used to the Cherokee6) - so turning it into a low approach and go-around instead, off we went for another try. This time it was successful, though I rather ballooned it before touching down, so off again perhaps third time lucky? Nice approach, to all intents and purposes a glide approach with 40 flap, just a touch of power to offset the sink before the hedge, straighten up for the crosswind and hold off, hold off, hold off and this one turned into a good one (well any one you walk away from .........!). Taxy back in, shut down and my first flight in a micro-light was over.
So my impressions?
This seems an excellent little aircraft, were I starting from scratch then there's little doubt this would be right there in the frame rather than the Grob or C150 that I actually started on. Depending on the future of the WP group then I could well be interesting in the CTSW or more likely its larger brother the CTLS - although still a two seater, this moves out of the microlight category and gives around 300KG useful load, is slightly larger and more stable and really does look the part - but who knows what the future might bring?
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