Foamies provide easy access to a variety of aircraft types and piloting experience.
This chart excludes my micros and the 2M glider.
Weight is adjusted to fit the scale.
In many ways, demands on the pilot increase from left to right.

The doldrums of August have yet to return. October is another 20+ hour month.
Soon will be flying bundled up and with gloves.

The intention was to have a new plane provide a different piloting experience.
The Cessna succeeded.

The evidence: I OVER REACTED to the experience after the first flight.
I was thinking: "If I want a new plane to fly at home I've got to trade this in."
All I needed was a trip to Olathe Centennial and then another flight at Rocky Hts.

Under 2/3 throttle it's no louder than the B-17. If I avoid excessive aerobatics while flying at home, I'll not disturb the neighbors, I'm sure.
At Olathe field, it really shines. It loves the wide open spaces. Full throttle all you want.
What a great plane.

I'm averaging 44 min a day this month so far (that will change with the weather). Nice to have taken advantage of the Indian Summer.
Next blog post will document last month's flight times.
One notable discovery looking at the data: I've got over 1870 sorties so far. There is a likelihood of reaching 2020 flights in 2020. Yay!

This is RC pilot's line-of-sight flying. If the plane were always in profile, there would be no trouble. You could clearly observe BOTH the speed over ground and rate of descent. Think of this descent as a triangle in profile. But typically a final approach is vectored toward the RC pilot. You're looking at the triangle facing somewhat toward you. Plus the plane is approaching: getting larger in the visual field. These factors make judging airspeed tricky.

By reducing altitude on both downwind and base legs, it minimizes the altitude remaining on final. This minimizes the airspeed effect due to gravity and puts the airspeed control onto the throttle stick sooner. This is what I mean by decoupling. A dead-stick landing in a short glide ratio craft has to be timed perfectly. A live-stick landing allows the pilot to establish level flight over the tarmac before coordinating elevator and throttle to complete the landing. No need to consider flare for this discussion. But there is not unlimited runway so timing is still critical. Coordinated smoothness is everything. It's a delightful and exciting challenge to 'grease' a landing. Different planes have different demands. The reason I'm so obsessive recently is: I don't want to be clumsy with the heavier (5lb) and more expensive T-28.

I take practicing while driving a car seriously. It's a piloting opportunity not to be neglected. Coordinate turning with smoothly modulated braking. With many drivers you can easily discern the separation of turn / brake / turn. I don't say anything, I just observe.
Smooth coordinated controls is expert piloting.

Current flight line: ArtiZan; UMX Radian; Radian Pro; UMX Icon; UMX Yak 3D; Ultimate2; Timber STOL; Blade 180;Blade 350 QX3

Hobby budget year 2017 is here! Time to buy the long awaited FMS T-28 Trojan V4 - hopefully with updated retracts. This will be the heaviest plane in my small collection. I have read through the ENTIRE RCGroups thread on the FMS Trojan.

Two things I've been doing in preparation for my first warbird:
a) Edited a T-28 in Phoenix Flight Sim 5.5. Set 1400mm; Set the 6.5lb weight; Reduced the "Lift" factor; Increased the "Frontal Drag"; Increased the "Stall" setting to make it more susceptible. Moved the CG forward to reduce the tail-down landing approach. Reduced the "Robust" setting to make it break if it stalls in or touches nose-gear first.
b) Real world: practicing touch and gos and power-on landings using my most repaired and most expendable plane the ArtiZan.

T-28: I'm prepared to repair and/or replace the retracts eventually, but am determined to get the most out of them, flying off pavement.

Observations:
1) Turning from base leg to final approach, on both the simulator and real-world I get a ballooning effect, as if I'd just deployed flaps. If this were only because of turning into the wind I could understand but seems to happen with no wind and in both directions. Is this simply because coming out of a turn, a flattening of the wings produces more lift relative to the ground?

Techniques:...Continue Reading