Well, yesterday was a fun day at the field. It did include some carnage. Larry and I got to the field just before noon. Muggy and hot, and not much breeze. Some turkey vultures showed some signs of good lift, and the shade was about to start to cover our flightline. We put the Canopy up for some shade till then and started to do some flying. Got the Mini Ultra Stick out and gave it a go. Wow, with the new ESC it has crazy power. There had to be something wrong with that ESC all along. It has never had this type of pull or speed, and all I did was remove the ESC that exploded into flames and put in a new pentium ESC from DonsRC.
The Grass was still very tall at Dix so I brought out a big carpet remnant left over from doing my trailer floor. Not as big as I thought, so it was ok for takeoffs, but not so great for landing. But we tried
After a few more flights we noticed the vultures getting some nice lift and put the gliders in the air. I got a good 50+ minute flight out of the first pack including 2 or 3 climbs and some low level floating. I did spot land it on the carpet which was cool. I did bounce it off the tall grass first though, but still stopped it on the carpet which would have counted in a LMR competition.
Larry tried take off from the carpet with his t-28, but that was a bad idea. Ended up damaging the socket for the wing bolt. I put the Radian back up shortly after that, and about 1 minute into the climb (yes I was up there) the wings started spinning
Then they just seperated completely and started spinning to the ground. The fuse made the perfect lawn dart to the woods. Found one wing half and the fuse, but it is done. The wing lived, but the Fuse and gear seem to be shot, and likely not trustworthy to fly.
Larry tosses his glider next and it goes badly also. This glider has a lot of wing flutter in very little wind or a dive and it will cause loss of control. For some reason they started to flutter and he couldn't get it back. It dove behind some trees and went in.
Then I dumb thumbed my Tribute. It is repairable, but still hate to see this happen since the plane is discontinued. I have a spare, and this one will fly again. Odd, I for some reason love to beat down on this plane. I did have lots of nice flights with the Yak 55 and the Swift II, but didn't pull out anything crunchy with the luck we had been having.
Then an old friend showed up from our former club. Wayne pulled in right after I had mentioned missing flying with him and some of the other fellas at the club. And he brought a surprise. A Vario 1/4 scale Bell heli! Never been that close to a 1/4 scale, and wow it's a bigun! I am guessing 7ft diameter on those blades. I will let the pics speak on this bird. It is pleasure to watch fly. I am also including some pics of the MSC Swift II night flyer.
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