76.5 span Great Planes Cub. Set up for electric power. 4-6s I ran a 3700 6s that balanced it out nicely. Scale functional Robart landing gear cost me over $100. 21st Century Fabric. Very convincing pilot bust by my wife. Fiberglass Specialties two sided jugs on cowl. about a $50 item. Scale GL wheels were about $30 with replica hub caps. Posted for ardvark

I confess this video is of poor overall quality. But to me this stuff has been so meaningful, so that's what a blog is for right?

Go Pro attached to my head kept bopping off the ceiling, Tons of editing and the best 10 minutes of some full flap steep decent angle landings. An upexpected plane in the pattern led to a go around. Looks like flying solo I was departing with the flaps still deployed.. Oops I wanted to fly the centerline, which on the last full pass was "pretaay fine.



If you have a life goal of a PP...Go giterdone!

Proficiency flight N33150 (12 min 4 sec)

https://www.rcgroups.com/forums/show...e#post50272309

99.9% of my FPV attempts are junk. This day I did a few things well.....took me 18months to get around to reviewing the footage...Hats off to the pros who do this so effortlessly. Time to better isolate my mount to vibration.

Livingston WI May 2022 (2 min 58 sec)

Yesterday I obtained a set of Gentle Lady plans here that put me on a nostalgic bent.

Turns out that by not deleting classified posts I have accumulated 9 pages of image attachments that nicely chronicle my adventures on RCG. Since about 2003 I've been enjoying primarily the Classifieds. It's time I upgraded to RCG plus. I looked and looked the other day for a tab to make a donation, and now atop the blog tool there it is...Maybe you can upgrade too?

Anyway, a teen named Adam takes classes online with my bride and recently we started corresponding about his entry into gliding, specifically thermal duration gliders. My first RC project was a Carl Goldberg Gentle Lady. I pitched Adam on trying a scratch build, but he's a busy guy, no reply as of yet.

Back about 1994, I was doing a lot of high start gliding in a recently deceased friend's field. My eldest son Jake now 27 is watching the action from a backpack carrier on my back. Long time.....

Another discovery was an archived RCG post I did upon my first discovery of depron foam. We were renting a golf dome weekly in Madison WI and thusly lots of creative one-off builds would show up "zero dark thirty" on those cold winter indoor flying days. My pal and CFI Pete ordered a cool biplane from Hobby Lobby only "would I take delivery of the parcel while he traveled out of town with his family" Not one to miss the opportunity to inspect a cool kit I agreed, and traced the parts one by one. It was a fun and important learning opportunity:

https://www.rcgroups.com/forums/show...ilding-for-Fun

I've been covering a Slope glider wing - time to get back at it. Cheers.

The ESKA was my "goto park flyer back in the 2000s... I love the unique wing attach method. Two L shaped tabs index off the trailing edge, the forward spar locks into a former with a dowel. the wing is locked in place by the forward hatch with the forward hatch rubber band mounted in tension from inside. No exposed attachment fittings. Elegant!

Back in 2015, we moved here and the only shipping damage out of the entire household was one of the very last items packed.....With everything else in the Uhaul, I topped the pile with RC aircraft including this lovely laser cut puzzle-like craft called ESKA penned by Steve Pauley of Minneapolis and a then member of MARCEE. I forgot to pack the wing...As I rolled out of the driveway I crushed it. Steve has ceased selling the kit but at the time, he had a few on hand and shipped me a replacement kit.

Fast forward seven years to 2022 and me riveted to the TV and wondered will we have war in Europe? Some folks knit, I choose to cut and fit balsa in front of the TV.

The plan and manual are superb. the balsa quality too, but with many COVID builds complete and much to fly this season this one might sit on my shelf for another 7 years.

Over in the slope forum I chronicled restoring an ancient sloper called the Super Cheetah. Old hands here coached me through the resto including bagging the balsa skinned wing. After two years of prevarications I did the vacuum bagging today. Im waiting for the GG to cure.

In other news I taxi tested my Senior Telemaster but didn't much like my window decor, so I went out looking for ideas. A guy on the FT forums shared his look so, I made templates late last night and added simulated rubber edges with my trusty Sharpie pen.

This Cularis was purchased here last year from the charming, generous, and talented Peter Young of LA. He generously built up custom servo harnesses making my wing assembly a breeze...bad joke. Thank you sir!

My Fun Cub sat for a year while I vascillated over buying an 8 channel capable TX. When my pal Ed asked me to E convert this monster H9 Cub I used his JR8103 to set up and maiden my FCub...Now I really need a TX!

Very successful winter build season. On the bench is a scratch copy of the DAW TG-3 Sloper I learned with back in 2000. Also, waaay back when... I had huge fun with tricopers but not so much quads so I just received from porkchop29 here a David Windestal V4 CF tricopter. Cheers

I started flight training in 1999 and dragged it out till 2018. Flew this club 1975 Archer 40 hours in 2021.

This is a 1980 ish Squadron Aviation Cloud Dancer. A 66% Jenny powered by a geared Rotax 277. 248# and part 103 legal. Lots to say but for now, "Wow". We bought an untralight.

I crashed this Senior Telemaster ARF in March 2010. My restorations efforts came in fits and starts, with much progress in the past week recouping from COVID.

Lots of customizations:

Four-bolt wing attachment
rudder/elevator controls are very precise two-piece control rods with a pivot that passes it through the fuse.
Sullivan tail wheel
Castle BEC
since I shattered the aft fuse I made an open bridge structure and covered it in clear to show it off
separate RX hatch on fuse bottom
Bomb bay
Titanium tundra gear with tundra tires

Yeah so maybe year ten is the charm. I schmucked this wonderful bird nearly tenyears ago and several attempts to bash it met with disappointment. I decided to return to the original configuration but with some considerable faux pas:

I lengthened the turtledeck area by 4 inches..seemed cool at the time. Not so much today. tail moment too long.

I repaired the after bulkhead with a solid chunk of ply..a twin boomer doesnt need room for controls inside. So I had to route that bulkhead with a roto zip in situ.. what a hassle!!

The Asto 605 geared was plenty on 5s but years back I picked up an outrunner for the quiet hum Ive come to love...only mounting it to rails is ..well complicated. So with the cold and snow this week I dove in and created an nice custom mount with a nose ring for maybe a cowl mount point.

So as a camera platform Vickers Vimy style it would benefit from aft mounted servos. Not helpful here.. forward servo mount restored...check.

So I invested in a redundant RX battery set up.. probably overkill, Castle BEC is my first choice but with the long tail momoment and my current packs being 5s 4000 not 4450 I opted to create a THIRD hatch to stash the RX batteries and fail over electronic under the battery tray. I had installed this glob in the bomb bay, but who wants a receiver in the bomb bay..I have a cool bomb drop made from a wooded cigar box... I'll check c/g during assembly, it the c/g works without the added weight I'll off the seperate receiver in favor of light weight and one less point of failure...

This has some lovely ultra micro gear in it and flies like its on rails. battery needed is a 2s 350mah. Electic bits are from a Tech One indoor 3d plane. I did this for Efest and won a pylon contest with it...wicked fast. ws...maybe 15"

$200 RTF less rx

While it doesn't look much different than the image at the top of the blog I've put a ton of time into it this week. The wing center bay was reinforced with ply and tapped for bolt on wing attach. I wrestled with the boom attachments and arrived at a method I really like... The fore and aft portions are supported by a short length of foam water heater insulation tube. Two conduit clamps and blind nuts lock the booms in place. I was so so thrilled to have the incidences dial in and the whole thing take on a nice rigid feel. I still need to cover all the open bays and install the wing servos, but the wing is nearly done. My next big challenge is where to locate the elevator and rudder servos. I can make a bay in the h stab or mount them ahead of the Vstab or I could run cables and mount them forward? I may regret adding weight aft of cg the tail moment is 19" now just like the original ST.

I needed to do something other than work last week so I dove into the restoration of my Broken Senior Telemaster. Power in the new version will jump from the lowly 750w Astro 40G to a 2000 watt Eflite 160 outrunner on 10s.

The design challenges have been interesting. See the pics at:

http://picasaweb.google.com/rcgreave...45782411842418

I went back and forth about mounting the booms off the fuse.. glad I revised to the wing mounting, it looks right. Next steps are to convert to a bolt on wing mounting, Servo mounts for the H stab, Motor mounting and the crucial jig up to dial in the empennage mounting to get 2 degrees incidence on the h stab. I hope to be able to carry a heavier video camera or DSLR with confidence.

some more memorable shots.

Some additional items from my archives

some project pics

I didn't properly recharge my transmitter battery and it cost me my favorite plane today. NEVER try to quick charge a NIMH pack. Stupid pilot error!

One of my resolutions for this year of 2010 is to chronicle some of my building and flying fun. The ESKA is a laser cut kit, I believe the designer is a MARCEE member in Minneapolis, St Paul area. Thanks to my friend Tim who gave me the kit as a gift back in about 2005

Here's a link: http://www.electroflying.com/eska.html