Some Excitement Flying The Kestrel 19 In this second article Derek, one of the world's most experienced glider pilots, picks on an old favourite which he considers to be probably the best value of all the glass gliders flying in the UK today. Both photos of the Kestrel 19 by Neil Lawson of The White Planes Picture Company. The Kestrel was the first glass-fibre glider to be produced in the UK and was chosen by Slingsby because it was very competitive for its time and being a Glasflugel design, it introduced them to some of the best glass design know how of any of the German manufacturers. It started life as a 17 metre, and then after producing a few, Slingsby's extended the span to 19 metres and went into full production. More than 90 were built and the vast majority are still flying all over the world. The Kestrel 19 had flaperons. That is the flaps and ailerons moved up and down together for better roll control. In addition, the flaps could be lowered independently of the ailerons for landing. This involved two levers in the cockpit - an unusual complication. A lever mounted on the instrument panel lowered the flaps to the landing positions, half or full landing flap, by lifting the handle and pulling it out. In addition, a normal flap control was on the cockpit wall close to the airbrake lever. Adjusting the flaps up for high speeds and downwards for climbing, moved both the flaps and ailerons and so changed the camber over the whole wingspan. In addition to the landing flaps and top surface airbrakes, it was also fitted with a tail drag parachute operated by toggles mounted on the panel, the left hand side one to deploy the chute and the right hand one to jettison it. The undercarriage retraction lever was on the right hand side cockpit wall and in addition there were toggles for the rudder pedal adjustment, tow cable release, and waterballast jettison taps and ventilator controls. This certainly made it the most complicated cockpit layout of any glider I know. It Is Certainly Not Twitchy To Fly I was involved in some of the later developments and tested the modifications. These included a half landing flap notch for use in very turbulent thermals, an increase in the rudder area to improve the handling when getting into turns quickly and also the introduction of a small, geared tab on the elevator to increase the elevator forces and so allow a wider C of G range. With this tab, test flying on the maximum aft C of G., when I measured the stick movements at varying speeds to check the stick fixed stability, I was amazed to discover that the stick position was virtually unchanged regardless of the s