Been having fun getting back into fixed wing flying after a long break. Got involved with a music club and started going away regularly camping and playing music and there was no room to fit a decent plane into the RV camping trailer, so got into drones and stopped flying fixed wing.

While doing what's called the "big lap" after retirement, aka circumnavigating the great continent of Australia with our RV, I saw and went into several hobby shops and rekindled my interest in fixed wing. On impulse bought an E-Flite Timber X 1.2m and by pure luck when we got home the guy that originally taught me to fly in another state, is now flying at the closest club to where I live.

Here's a link to just one of the amazing places we visited on our big lap

Nature's Window at Kalbarri National Park West Australia (0 min 34 sec)

In prep to get back in the air, I also bought Real Flight evolution and put some time into it. Good thing I did that, my first flights I'd forgotten you don't keep holding the aileron stick over to bank and turn and drove it straight into the ground. Quickly got my groove back. RC flight sims have come a long ways recently.

First day at the field my flying friend had a buddy box setup on his pattern electric plane (big one). Had a bit of nerves when he handed control to me, it all went fairly well, after a couple of circuits he took it back and then we did it all again on the next battery. He then maidened my Timber and then it...Continue Reading

http://www.diginfo.tv/2011/10/24/11-0229-r-en.php

Fascinating device. Where can I buy one????

It wasn't my favourite but it wasn't far from it. It's what I call my "workhorse" plane, I maidened that one on the 1st of January this year and in that time it had 96 flights. I was hoping to get it to at least 100 but alas that wasn't to be.

Best guess as to the cause was a receiver brown out. It was the first flight of the day, I had done a range / bind check on the radio before flying. I had charged and checked the battery, a 5 cell eneloop.

I had just completed a stall spin and pulled out of it fine, was circling around to come down the runway and had come a good 180 to 200 degrees from where I'd pulled out of the spin. Up to that point I had good control and orientation.

Then the motor (which had been running fine) just dropped back to either idle or had stopped running. The plane was still banked over in the turn and I had no control, no aileron, no elevator, no throttle, it just kept banking over and down at full speed into the ground.

I always set up my planes with failsafe for throttle at idle. It was running an AR500 receiver which has a reputation for brown out from a few things I've read.

After the crash, the battery was still good and the receiver / servos all operational. The power switch had turned off but I'm fairly confident that was from the impact, the off position is towards the front of the plane and with the speed it hit at, that makes sense to me. The other possibility (which I think is remote) is that the switch turned itself off.

It's been 14 months (and I fly most weekends) since I've had a catastrophic crash so I'm pretty happy with how I've gone. Still sad to lose a good plane but that's the nature of this hobby for sure.

After reading on several forums about other pilots who kept a flight log, I decided to start keeping one myself just over a year ago.

Here's the analysis from the last year of my flying. 241 flights in 12 different planes for a total of 29.5 hours flying time. 68% of that was with glow powered (2 and 4 stroke), the rest was electric powered.

Total fuel mixed during the last year was 31 litres.

My Skyraider clocked up the most flights, 73 for a total of 562 minutes.
My Seagull 40 (with ASP 4 stroke) was 2nd, 45 flights for a total of 341 minutes.

Sure adds up over time. Thanks to the HMFC club for a safe and fun environment.

I plan to keep on recording my flights in a log book, it has proved interesting and useful. Since I have over half a dozen active planes at any time, recording in the log book has helped in that I had a plane with gave me a dead stick and I thought that had happened in the past with the plane.

So, I looked back in the log and sure enough, the same plane deadsticked at the same approx time in the flight, so I dug deeper and found I was flying at the extreme limit of the capacity of the tank.

Now, you may well figure those things out without a log, but for me, it make it easier and gave me better data.

8 planes were maidened, 2 were totally destroyed

This plane is my favorite to fly at the moment. I'm the 3rd owner of it, it's a "Freestyle" and is powered by a Saito 72 4 stroke. It is particularly stable at take off and flight and is capable of any sort of acrobatic manuevers.

Only problem is the tank size is a bit small, only get about 7 minutes before it runs out of fuel.

Decided to get the camera out and take some pictures of planes I've got that I've not taken off the ground yet.

The YAK is a recent purchase from another club member. It is in as new condition. Am waiting on several new batteries.

The Seagull Extra 300S is a new plane with a motor from a Tiger 60 that I crashed last year, the motor is an ASP .91 4 Stroke. This could get maidened any weekend now.

The Big Stik is the plane I've been keen to fly for some time. Had some problems breaking in the motor and am nearly ready to get it in the air at long last. Am having a long break over Easter so hoping for a chance to get it flying then.

These planes are all photographed on the breakfast bar in our kitchen, it's a piece of hardwood (forest redgum) from Queensland. I built the kitchen as well, but the breakfast bar came already sanded and polished. The kitchen was maidened about 12 months ago.

My local flying club, had it's annual scale day a few weekends back.

Here are two videos taken at the scale day. You'll see quite an assortment of planes including several twins and an autogyro. Hope you enjoy.

Hinterland Model Flying Club Scale Day 2010 (14 min 59 sec)

Hinterland Model Flying Club Scale Day 2010 Pictures (2 min 33 sec)

...Continue Reading

Check out this video of DLE30 powered Pilatus Porter taken at my local flying field.

Alan Brewer Pilatus Porter (0 min 40 sec)

Or maybe not

Stuka Agro (2 min 14 sec)

Found this video via the Spektrum group on facebook.

Great example of FPV (First person video) formation flying

Nitroplanes Falcon 25 and Parkzone Habu Formation flying! (6 min 38 sec)

Here are several short videos of my world models skyraider flying recently.

The first video is a landing (not so good) followed by a quick takeoff.

Skyraider landing and takeoff (0 min 28 sec)

The second video is of the landing immediately afterward, a much better landing.

Skyraider landing (0 min 18 sec)

...Continue Reading