I first acquired my Graffiti about 18 months ago. I had first seen the pictures
in Silent Flight and later the real thing at the Long Mynnd when Terry and
family had come up to fly in the Wolverhampton Club Scale Day.
Shortly afterwards I took delivery of a kit. The quality of all the parts
was outstanding, easily the equivalent of any of the more expensive European
kits. Admittedly the fuselage is polyester rather than epoxy but on the plus
side this eases and cheapens repair should it become neccessary. Thw wings are
the best I have ever seen with ballast tubes and joiners already installed.
A couple of weeks later and after the expenditure of a lot of elbow grease my
Graffiti was resplendent in its epoxy glass wood veneer finish.I always think it
is a shame to hide the natural finish of the veneer, and the veneer on the
Graffiti wings is excellent 1.2mm thick and matched on both panels.
Since its test flight, when incidentally it flew straight off the board, it has
notched up many hours of air time. In this period there have been a few knocks
and bumps and a notable mid-air on The White Sheet!
Purbeck Sailplanes responded in excellent fashion, providing a replacement wing
panel within a week. Try getting that service with any other manufacturer.The
only other damage has been a couple of broken servo gear sets and a broken tail
bolt.
The wing planform looks very aggressive in the air and its performance does not
disapoint. With its four servo wing the performance is very versatile. Flaps
down and its floats around and climbs easily, reflex them and it screams. Couple
the flaps and ailerons into the elevator and it turns very sharply indeed.
The wing comes with ballast tubes installed but in nearly 18 months of flying it
has handled all weather conditions without recourse to ballast.
It is not the cheapest of its type but its quality warrants the slight extra
cost compared to say an Infinity and its performance is not far short of its
more expensive moulded brethren. There is a law of diminishing returns - to get
that last little extra margin of performance becomes increasingly more difficult
(read expensive) to achieve hence the huge cost differential in moving to an all
moulded machine. That the Graffiti manages to come close to this performance at
a substantially lower price is a reflection of the design and construction of
the kit.
