8-19-06
allright... I haven't kept up with this, been pretty busy this summer. I've been flying about once every 2 to 3 weeks, sometimes I take the electrics down the road in a nearby field... the kadet is doing really well with the new OS .46 AX on it, though I did have my first dead-stick on the plane last time I was out for no apparrent reason... I was able to keep my cool and make the proper approach and got it back onto the runway which was pretty cool. I've been through 3/4 of a gallon of fuel with the kadet so far, one more weekend and I'll probably need a fresh one. I've been learning rudder turns on it and a friend helped me setup the slow stick so the rudder and aileron sticks do the same thing so I can practice using the left stick to turn...
1-1-06
It was very windy at the field today but I managed one flight on the corsair to ring in the new year... ended up stalling it towards the end of the flight on an appraoch to land and boinked it from about 8' up with no damage. Yay.
8-14-05
I took the corsair and kadet to the flying field and flew the corsair for 12min, then the kadet for about 10... then the corsair again for another 10, then I took the kadet up and it was running too rich so after the 3rd attempt to bring it in I asked Terry to come over and help and he talked me through it. The crosswind was erratic and there was some turbulant areas over the field from thermals... so I flew the corsair one more time since it does well in the wind and put the kadet away.
8-9-05
I took the corsair to our club meeting and flew it around for about 10min.. dorked the landing and bent the prop shaft and collet prop adapter.
8-6-05
I flew the corsair this morning before work, but only for about 5min. It was a bit of a handful for my nervous fingers but it was fun. I really think if I went to this right after the slow stick I would have crashed it in no time. It acts a lot differently than the rudder slow flyer. I charged it up again after work and took it out for a full flight, the faster you fly it the better it handles. It is the "hottest" plane I've ever flown, It still makes me a little nervous but it should be a good learning tool.
8-7-05
I took the planes to the field today and it was a bit windy out and no-one was there. I got the kadet setup to run and flew a pack thru the corsair, then I went to fly the kadet after the wind had died down but 5' into the roll-out the wind picked up and lifted the left wing and tipped it over, so I took the hint and parked it. I flew the corsair through another pack after it charged. The more I fly it the more I like it. It goes about 15min on a charge, running around 1/2 throttle most of the time. The ailerons need some work where the torque rods go in (maybe some ca..) but I'm really pleased with the plane. It makes me look forward to getting the four star in the air.
7-24-05
Yesterday I had a great time at the field dispite the high heat index. I flew about 12 times, a total of about an hour and 10min in the air. The engine wasn't running very well and we usually fiddled with it between flights, some of the flights was just a trip around the field to realize the engine was running worse than it had been prior to the adjustment. I also tried 2 different spark plugs and reset the idle throw as well. It would seem to run fine on the ground, and sound lean in the air so we would richen it up a little. Then it would be too rich and hesitate and stumble when transitioning from low to high throttle. Eventually we got it to run well enough and left it alone.
The grass wasn't mowed and the airplane struggled to leave the runway while cutting grass along the way. The OS .46 LA series engine is rather weak and It needed about 200' to roll out with quite a bit of up elevator to help keep the front wheel light. For the first half of flying the landings were from right to left, and the second half the wind had shifted to the other side and I had to land downhill. It is a bit more difficult to land such a floater on a short runway (220' measured by GPS device..) and the slight downhill slope does't help. I ended up clearing the grass and applying down elevator to force it to touch down about 1/2 way on the field, followed by a small bounce, prop strike, and rollout finished off by a right turn and ended up in the same place each time; about 10' from the end of the landing strip facing the flight line.
I did several loops, though they were really tall and pointy at the top where it would stall and nose back over, and I tried a couple of rolls but they weren't very graceful at all and required quite a bit of down elevator while coming through the roll to keep it somewhat in line.
Now my airplane is all covered in grass and I need to clean it up. I won't be flying next sunday because our club is hosting a combat event on saturday and I think I will go check that out for a while rather than flying on sunday.
7-17-05
another 3 flights today. The first one was pretty good, I had some instruction on landing due to the crosswind and though I twisted the front wheel around a little because it contacted first, it was not too bad. The second flight was good as well, except the cross wind had picked up a bit and I was real nervous trying to get it on the landing strip so Terry brought it in for me. The third flight was nice, though shorter than the others. Terry talked me through a left to right landing with a fair crosswind and I managed to get it down okay, but I touched the ground a little too soon and it bounced about 6 times prior to coming to a stop.
7-15-05
3 more flights today. The first one was about 15min long because I made 8 landing approaches before I was happy with one. The second one was about 10min long and the third one was about 5min long. The last landing was near disaster. The wind was a bit wierd out, there was one section on the north end of the field that would put the airplane into a stall due to a tail-wind, and the south end of the landing strip had a cross-wind that would blow the plane 20' off track and lift up the outter wing.... I had to land in the opposite direction than I'm used to.
I made about 6 passes and was happy with the approach I had. I came in it was just about where I wanted it but evidantly it stalled down at the end of the strip about 4' up as my ailerons and elevator were no longer effective, and it nosed slightly up and banked right towards the pitt.. I saw that there wasn't really anything I could do since there were objects in its flight path, so I just hit the kill button and leveled it out as best I could, and it cleared the wire-spool table along the flightline and made a hard 3 point landing with very little roll-out, and came to rest less than 1" from one of the shade trees along the flight-line (my fingers didn't fit between the LE of the wing and the tree)
So.. the landing gear was a bit sprung outwards but nothing was damaged. I decided to pack everything up while I was still ahead. In retrospect I might have saved it with some rudder input, but I had been messing with that a bit on the other flights and I imagine the result would have been much worse. Luckily I wasn't learning this on a sunday afternoon, because usually there are several planes where I ended up landing.
7-10-05
okay... long story short- I built a Sig Kadet LT-40 this spring to use as a glo trainer, and I finally got together the money to buy a new radio. I have been flying the trubite on and off for the past couple of months, I ended up resolving most of the glitch issue by relocating the antenna by running it from the top of the fuse up to the top of the vertical stab.
I got my new radio (a hitec optic-6) on the 5th and I set it up for the kadet over the week. Today at the field I had another club member look over the plane and help me with the final setup. The throttle trim needed some work to get the wot, idle and kill set. Then he took the plane for its maiden flight. After flying it around for a couple of minutes he handed it over to me. It was huge change from the tribute. It was pretty easy to see and flew very slow and gentle. I had the controls set to slightly less than the book recommendations on low rates and slightly more on high rates. With the low rates it was undercontrolled in the slight breeze and we ended up flying it on high rates the whole time. He had to make 4 landing approaches to figure out how low to trim the engine idle and its first landing was a little bumpy but not horrible. (dragged a wingtip) Then another club member took it up and I flew it around again and made some approaches... I was pretty nervous and shaky so he landed it that time.
On the next flight he took off again and I flew it around for a bit and on my third approach I made my first landing, it was great except for the prop strike which killed the engine. I went and got it and he took it up again and I flew it around a bit more and made a nice landing, and the engine was still running, so I turned it around and made my first take-off which was a bit bouncy but mostly due to the runway. I flew it around the field a couple of times and landed it again, turned around and took off... flew around a bit more and had another nice landing, though it bounced a little (3 hops..) and killed the engine.
Then after everyone was pretty much packed up and gone except for one other guy I refueled the plane and took off and flew around for 10min and landed it for a total of 3 solos, and the last one was completely by myself. It was a great day at the field, I had a really nice time. The airplane is very smooth and stable in the air and looks great flying around. The landings are pretty easy, though it does want to float and you have to give it some down elevator to get it to meet the earth again. I might try a prop with one pitch less to help slow it down at idle, and it might help it throttle up from low to mid rpms because it seems to lag there a bit. It flys easily at 1/4 throttle and we were flying around 10-15min at a time with some fuel left in the tank afterwards. I think I burned about 1/4 of a gallon. I really like the optic 6 radio, its very comfortable to hold and easy to program. Though some folks don't like the slide dual rate switches I thought they were easy to use and seem like they will hold up fine.
1-14-05
after reviewing my funds I decided I couldn't replace the airframe so I resecured the wing and bent the motor mount back into place, and reinstalled the electronics with a new gws 6 channel rx and crystal. I went out to the field and did a range check and it seemed okay, but when I throttled up the motor at about halfway it started to have the glitchfest again. I had my wife hold onto the airplane while I worked the tx and found that when I touched the antenna of the tx the glitching would stop. I am going to see if one of the club guys can use their spectra module on the plane and see what happens.
1-9-05
I got in a 20min flight on the tribute with the brushless setup. I had to rehinge the rudder because it was real sloppy, and I also added some neon paper to the top and bottom to make it easier to see. On the landing I kinda did a parachute right into the grass and it broke the apc prop near the root. I put on the e-flite 12x6 at 6.6:1 and went to go fly again but when I throttled up it was acting all glitchy and the ailerons were going crazy. I went home to check it out and it seemed okay there, so I went to the other field near my house and went to fly and it was glitchy again, I found that if I held onto it by the canopy it was fine, so I throttled up and let go and it went about 15' and snapped into the ground, breaking the glue on the wing loose and it bent my repaired motor mount at a 45' angle to the fuse, and looks like it bent the prop adapter very slightly.
1-2-05
Put a brushless setup on my tribute, but only got to fly it for about 2 min total today because of some rain. Its a bit more of a handful now, seems to want to roll a lot more due to the torque or the weak elevator joiner. Too early to really have a feel for it yet, sounds different, I think a bit nicer.
1-01-05
Flew my dad's slow stick again this morning, tried to get him some flight lessons but it was breezy and the poor thing was getting blown around too much, brought it in at a stand-still landing under power due to the increase in wind while it was in the air.
12-26-04
I flew a gws slow stick my mom and I got my dad for x-mas, three times I guess. the first flight was real hairy because I had the CG all wrong (was looking at the glider page by mistake...) and one prop later I had it all sorted out and flew it around for two battery packs.
12-22-04
forgot to keep up with this thing.. not sure if I was flying last weekend or not. I went and took the tribute out once this morning and had it in a vertical climb-out and the fresh charge wasn't quite enough to keep it going and it stalled over and nosed in from about 6'. I probably could have flown out of it if I applied down elevator instead of up elevator, kinda planted it right in. badly bent the gearbox shaft, broke the cf tube, cracked the motor mount. took it all apart to repair. leaving for VT for x-mas tomarrow anyway.
12-5-04 flew the tribute twice in the small field next to our house. I did several nice reverse cuban 8's. the airplane doesn't have enough power to do the regular ones but if you start on top and do a reverse it works out well. It was breezy when I landed the 2nd time and I pretty much did a harrier down to about 1' foot from the ground and cut the motor.
12-4-04
I flew the tribute twice today... I had a friend with me and I was a little nervous and my fingers were cold so it wasn't too graceful, but I managed maybe 3 seconds of knife edge with it which was nice.
11-28-04
I flew the tribute 5 more times today, pretty much uneventful. I did notice after 3 rolls in a row that the tail looked like it was trying to twist off. I need to remind myself that it's a 3d airplane, and not an aerobat.. but I think it's a good transition from the slow stick to a sport aileron airplane. I tried to practice more runway approaches and spent some time upside down. I'm finding that I don't always make the right input when it's upside down, which is what practice is all about. :)
11-25-04
I got to fly the tribue 4 times in the morning, with the 8.4v packs and increased aileron and elevator throw it flies pretty well. It's going to be a good airplane to practice upside down/up side right orientation stuff. If I only had more batteries...
11-20-04
After not having a plane together to fly for several months I picked up a E-flite trubite 3d foam electric and put it together and such... I decided not to move into the corsair yet because it's a bit tricky to fly requiring a lot of rudder input from what I understand, and I'm not learned at using the rudder on a 4 channel airplane. Ionly got to fly it the tribute once today because of stuff we had going on. It flies real nice. At first I was real nervous because it's a 3d airplane but it actually flies very nice, and it's not unsettled at all. It does fly real slowly on the stock setup though, and I was a bit disappointed in that. Otherwise it was great to have something in the air again, and with ailerons too! I did several rolls but they were quite sloppy as the plane doesn't fly that quickly and the throws were set too small.
7-10-04
guess it's been a while since I wrote in this thing... 2 months ago the wing of my slow stick folded with about 70 flights on it. It happened while I was trying to teach a friend of mine how to fly R/C just after I had it up flying it well beyond it's limits. I haven't gotten a chance to finish up the Corsair yet. I need to install the servos and get a battery pack for it.
10-19-03
Another couple of quick flights during lunch, it was really windy out and I could hardly fly into the wind, it picked up the wing and flipped it over a couple times in a crosswind, kept things interesting. I made sure to land while I still had enough power to run the motor. Both landings were zero airspeed touch-downs about 20' away from me, pretty neat.
10-11-03
I got out of work early on saturday and wanted to get home and take out the slow stick and the duraplane. I had installed 3" wheels on the duraplane that my uncle gave me on our visit up north and I was currious to see how they would handle the field. I ran the slow stick through it's two packs first, and had a generally good time with it. Then I put the duraplane together and flipped the servo reversing switches I had set for flying the slow stick, did a radio range check, fired it up and got set to take off. It took 3 attempts to get the plane airborne, it seemed like it had a very long roll-out and would hit a bump that would knock it over into the hay on the sides of the narrow runway. On the third attempt I actually got it airborne, and to my horror the plane rolled right when I told it to roll left. I had gotten mixed up on the aileron controls and they were not in reverse.. after about 35 seconds of very tense flying, I managed to bring it down to a lower part of the field and it only cartwheeled a couple of times. To my suprise the only damage was to a 1" section of the wing where the rubber band slipped off the too narrow wing guard and dug into the foam.
I replaced the rubber bands and corrected the aileron issue and managed to take off again. I went to bank around the right side of the field and gain altitude on the way back but quickly found that the roll rate was much greater than that of the slow stick and I lacked the finess to pilot the aircraft and banked it right into the ground with a loud snapping noise. As I walked to check out the wreckage I said to myself "I probably broke it this time" and found that the nose gear wire was bent at a 45' angle right at the base of the engine mount and the wing had broken, but other than that the plane was fine, the prop hadn't even broke. Here is a Photo of the damage. I took my stuff home and checked out the damage to the wing. I could probably repair it if the rear edge of the wing wasn't soaked with fuel.. and I had melted several spots on it trying to iron monokote onto the econokote, so I did some research and decided that I am going to order a Sturdy Birdy II wing kit, it is a little different construction but is recommended as a replacement, and it adds 3" to the wing span lowering the duraplane's massive wingloading, and it's $8 cheeper too. I decided to remove the covering from the tail feathers because if I was going to recover the wing, I was going to recover the rest to match. I think I am going to do a base with diagional stripes on the bottom of the wing and large circles in black on the top of the wing, with yellow tail feathers with black control sufraces. I am also going to pick up some great planes ultralite wheels because the dubro rubber jobs are pretty darn heavy, and on an airplane that already weighs over 4.5lbs every oz counts.
9-20-03
I got in a couple of short flights in the morning, it was pretty windy out. In the afternoon I went over to the field across from the inlaws and flew a couple of times before heading off to work.
9-19-03
I flew it today during lunch, I had to make the two flights quick though because my TX dumped from 6v down to 1v in about a minute, I think the batteries are pretty much toast, I'm only getting about an hour and a half out of them off a peak charge, I am going to try to trickle charge them overnight and see how that goes.
9-17-03
I headed over to my neighbors field during lunch and did two flights, I ended up at 29 minutes, 51 seconds for the li-ion pack, still trying to get an even 30min. I was goofing off and ran a dive too low and took it right into the weeds. No damage what-so ever thanks to the waist high green. It was kinda neat because for a brief second grass was flying up everywhere as the prop chopped it up, but then some got stuck between the pinion and prop shaft gear.
9-16-03
I was going to fly during lunch today but it was too windy, I got home an hour before sunset and managed a 10min slow nicd pack flight, 27min slow li-ion pack flight, and one 6 min full throttle nicd pack flight just after the sun set.
9-13-03
I made 2 lazy flights over at the field while Will and Kellie watched, I had Kellie on the sticks but the battery was low and altitude was a problem. (she was moving the stick under my thumb)
(9-11-03)
I managed to drive myself over to the field during lunch and flew both battery packs through the slow stick, nothing very exciting happened It wasn't sunny enough for the nice thermal in the corner of the field. I did manage a pretty long inverted flight, probably the longest so far.
9-10-03
Today during lunch my friend Bruce showed me how to get to a very nice field by his house and I flew both packs out there, First I flew with the nicd pack and it was very windy and I had to fight the wind the whole time. The second flight was probably the neatest so far. There is a 4 way stop intersection at the corner of the field for the 2 office buildings and while flying over there I noticed a large increase in lift, a thermal! I powered up to a pretty high altitude (about 3 glo-plane mistakes high) and cut off the motor, I was able to soar in the pocket for 2 whole minutes before a breeze messed it up, after that I was able to find it again and soar for another minute of unpowered flight, Bruce and I couldn't help but chuckle while it floated around, it was too cool.
After I got home from work I took it over to my neighbor's field and I tried to make each pack last as long as possible. The nicd pack lasted 12 minutes, and the li-ion pack lasted an impessive 27 minutes before it died. This was flying very lazy circles and figure 8s and ovals just above stall speed. I tried my best to make each circle, or figure 8 in the same space and got it within a couple of feet every time. I did accidentally stall at about 5' elevation and nosed-over and doinked it but the grass absorbed enough energy and no damage was done, I simply tossed it back up into the air.
9-6-03
Despite the stiff breeze I managed 7 flights today at the lot next door with the slow stick. The plane flipped over twice after landing due to the wind but no real damage occurred.
I got in 3 flights in the lot next door and 2 flights down the street at the field with the full scale grass strip. The 2 flights were later in the afternoon and I managed 15 minutes out of the li-ion pack flying lazily along, and kellie even took the controls for a minute but couldn't get the airplane to do anything she wanted it to do. After that I was doing some practice landings on the narrow runway and broke the prop with a nose-over after about 5 min into the nicd pack.
9-1-03
Allright, I get up at 7:00am and head over to the field at 8:00 only to find the sun right in the way, so I went back home for a couple of hours and went back to the field. Long story short, the wheels on my duraplane are too small for grass strips (which we were having a problem with over in bonaqua the day I soloed) and after about 18 failed attemps to take off I went home and got my slow stick out and flew that instead. It's so simple.. plug in the battery, throttle up, toss, flying. I also flew it again later in the evening and I managed a 12.38 minute flight out of the 600mah nicd pack using the 10x8 prop and approx 1/2 throttle most of the time. I'm not very impressed with the prop, I am going to pick up a 12x6 for regular flying and a 11x4.7 to try to get extended flight times with my li-ion pack.
8-31-03
Today at 9:00am I took the slow stick out and ran 2 packs through it in the field next to our house, and when I got back from work I flew it again, and after that I was teaching kellie's friend how to fly it and it ended up into the ground from about 10' and broke the prop and put two half-dime sized dinks in the foam on the wing and on the horizontal stabilizer, and made the landing gear pop off, I expected much worse damage. I had another prop on it and was up in the air again in about 15 minutes. I found that the prop dude sold me as a replacement (10x8) hardly works at all and hte plane really needs a 12x6 or an 11x4.7 to do well. Tomarrow I am going to fly my duraplane over in my neighbors field.
8-30-03
I got my GWS slow stick together last night and took it to my neighbor's field. The runway he has mowed for his Cub is really nice! I was able to do a roll-of-ground takeoff with the slow stick easily. In the excitement I haden't extended my receiver antenna but I was able to get it up without anything bad happening. I flew the plane around for about 10 minutes on the 600mah pack. Loops were a lot of fun, I even tried an inverted loop but it didn't quite have enough airspeed to get it all the way around. I also did the full elevator full rudder corkscrew looking thing, I'm not sure what it is called.. but the plane is really fun to fly, and at $35, there's nothing to be nervous about. I am charging up my li-ion battery as I write this to see how it does. I can tell this little plane is going to be great to hone my flying skills on, even if it it doesn't have ailerons. Afterwards I took it to the field next to our house and put about 4 flights on it.
Sunday 8-24-03
Wow, I actually got a day off of work and decided to head out to the field to see if I could find anyone to fly with. I waited around 2 hours over at the Ashland City field where Addison and I were flying last time to see if anyone was going to show up, but the only person who did was the security guard for the company that owned the property, who politely informed the that I was tresspassing, and that the field had been closed because the company was worried about liabilities. So, I got in my car and headed over to Bon Aqua, about 25min from my house, 45min from where I was. I knew there was a field out there, but I wasn't sure where. As I passed a post office I saw about 4 or 5 cars to the rear of the parking lot, with a large field behind it. I saw a windsock out of the corner of my eye, and knew that must have been the place, knowing there wouldn't be cars parked at a post office on a sunday.
When I got there there were several people at the field, and one person flying a U-Can-Do 3d. The folks there were very nice, and after borrowing a charge from a quick field charger (I haden't planned on flying, so my rx batteries weren't charged) We had to increase the aileron throw to get the plane to trim up well, and after a couple of test flights I was up in the air again, a little sloppy at first but by the 3rd flight I was doing pretty well, I started making the landing approaches which were a little different because it was landing from right to left, and all the other fields I had landed on were left to right. On one pass it seemed like I pretty much had it and I went ahead and set it down, a little rough but nto bad for my first landing. After that I did a take off, flew around a couple of times and managed to land again, my first solo! I was going to go for a second round but I was having trouble with the nosewheel due to excessive slop in the pushrod, so I packed everything up since it was dusk anyway. One time I was practicing we timed the plane flying around at around 1/4 throttle and at 13 minutes I handed it over to be brought in and it went dead stick on the landing approach and came up about 40 feet short of the runway (mowed grass) and ended up the weeds, no harm done. The plane isn't really fuel efficient as heavy as it is, and with a .46la.
Friday 5-31-03
Okay, so it's been over a year, but I was able to get out of work an hour early and meet my friend Addison at the ashland city field on the way home from work. He had a 30 sized heli he was working with and brought his new 60 sized heli (it was huge) because a friend was supposed to meet him there to trim it out. When I was doing a pre-flight inspection I found that I had left the receiver battery on at work most of the day, I must have bumped the switch while cleaning it a bit. Luckily Addison had his quick chargers with him since he had also brought several of his electric planes. 5 minutes later it was ready to go. Just as we went to go start the plane up for the first flight it started to rain out, so we headed under the pavilion for about 5 minutes and it let up to a light sprinkle and we took everything back out again. There was no wind to speak of, mostly cloudy, great flying conditions. He took my plane up and trimmed it out a bit, and handed the controls over to me. I flew around for about 5 minutes and he brought it back in again and took his heli out for a bit and then an electric ducted fan model which sounded like a hair-dryer zooming around the field. After refueling I was up in the air again, while trying a landing approach the plane went right over our heads and I guess as I looked up I gave it a little down elevator because as we turned to the other side it was about 8' from the ground and a quick pull on the elevator brought it back to a safe altitude. The third flight was less eventful, I spent most of it up pretty high feeling out the airplane with many many turns, several loops, hammer head type stalls and a couple attempts at inverted flight, which didn't work so well since the wing has quite a bit if dihedral to it. After that Addison took his heli back out again, and he was really getting the hang of moving it around the field. The week before he was working on hovering. His friend didn't show up to help him with the larger model, and after the sun went past the horizon we decided to pack things up on good note since we managed not to break anything. We both decided that "one more flight before we go" would probably result in massive trauma to the airplanes or the heli.
Saturday 3-23-02
I went out today around noon. The sky was perfect but it was a little breezy out. I flew around a tank and made about a dozen really nice low passes right along the runway area, and we brought it back in, then I did my first take-off. standing behind the plane and heading into the wind, it was airborn after a little work back and fourth on the ground and I had it pretty much flying and gave it back to the guy to take it down again. We changed the aileron servo horn to a smaller one to get less throw out of it, and took it back up again to trim it out, and back again to fuel up. I did another takeoff, and it was allright, he took it in again and had a propstrike so I put some more fuel in it and we went out and I did two more take-offs, then flew around for a bit. The air was rough and took a bit of effort to keep the plane going where I wanted it to go. I did one large loop and one really tight one, overall very successful day. Of course the wind went dead after everything was packed up at 4:30 as we were ready to go home.
Sunday 2-24-02
It's been a while since I went out, but I've been busy and I didn't have the batteries charged last weekend. Today I did about three whole flights with no mishaps, I am getting better at getting the plane over the runway as I bring it around, but every time it gets close and low to me some part of my brain makes it go away and up. have to get over that... also flew a balsa USA stick 40 trainer, was wierd flying with no ailerons. It was a bit breezy today, had trouble tracking a straight line sometimes...
Saturday 2-2-02
I headed out to the field after I had to go outside to retreieve the siphon-hose for ziggy's tank which I had dropped out the window. I didn't realize how nice it was out. When I got there Scott was there, and he took my plane up for me and I flew it around for around 10 minutes, until it ran out of fuel. I am getting better at lining it up along the field, and stalled it a bunch and got myself out of trouble each time. I am having a problem with altitude, I seem to keep drifting the plane higher and higher. Must be a fear of the ground or something. Batteries were a little low and the breeze picked up so I packed up and headed home to work on my 4*.
(Day two, Sunday January 27 2002)
I arrived at the field around 1:00 to find many people already there including Jay and Mark. It was rather windy and though Jay took my plane up twice it was being thrown around a bit too much for me to be comfortable with taking control of it. It was breaking in nicely though, and Jay showed what it's aerobatic potential was, even with very small control surface throws we had setup.
After a little bit the wind died down enough and Mark took the plane up for me and he showed me a couple things (like how you can sit there with full up elevator and right ailerons and the plane just messes around up in the air and still flies without loosing much altitlude) He got it slow, straight and level and handed me the radio. I flew for about 4 minutes doing the same lazy circle thing. It was a LOT easier today because I had added a 4" wide black bar across the underside of the wing, and one on the bottom of the elevator. I even did a couple loops, and an axial roll.
Then, the guy who build Jim and Jeff's Somethin' Extra took my plane up and he had me flying ovals around the field trying to get so I could be in the same place around each lap. Since I was still trying to get the plane to go where I wanted it to, I wasn't very successful, especially trying to fly directly over the runway area. But, it was another 4 or 5 minutes until the plane ran out of fuel and he took it in for the 3rd deadstick, no problem.
At the end of the day he took me up again once more for the same excercise, and it was another 4 or 5 minutes of flight without needing rescuing. By this time I'm a bit less nervous and it's going pretty nice, he says next time I fly I'll be ready to start take-offs.
(day one, saturday January 26 2002)
When I got to the field nobody was there, but it seemed like a nice enough place and the layout was organized. After sitting around for about 10 minutes, a guy named Scott showed up with a trainer and took it up for a couple flights, then offered to take up my duraplane. He trimmed it out and got it to fly fairly straight. A couple more people showed up, one of them turned out to be one of the club instructors, Jay. He took up my plane and flew a tank through it and took it back down, and we made a couple linkage adjustments and slowed the ailerons down.
Yet another club member showed up, Jeff, who was also an instructor but didn't do it anymore because he didn't really have the time. While the other guys were busy he checked out my plane and took it up and allowed me to control the elevator and ailerons. I had the plane for about two seconds at a time before I lost it, and after about 3 minutes of that he brought it back in.
Then Jay took my plane back up and while he had his thumb over the top of the aileron/elevator stick, I grasped it with my thumb and index finger, feeling the way he moved the plane around for a minute, I started to make the movements myself. Pretty soon his thumb was lax, only correcting about once every 15 seconds and coaching me verbally. At this point I was flying slow lazy right hand circles and ovals around 3 mistakes high. Then, he handed the radio over to me completely. He took a step back and continued with the verbal assistance, I flew for about a minute, then we decided to bring it back in as it was running low on fuel.
While Jay was flying his Somethin' Extra, Mark, another club member took up my plane so I could continue with the lazy circles and I had it for about 30 seconds when the plane freaked out and was out of control. Mark took the radio and nursed the plane back towards us and into the landing pattern and brought it down. Apparrently it had gotten out of radio range due to my antenna being installed incorrectly.
