Found a place to float fly on the way to the family reunion (the real reason I went... )

Lots of good pics and you can see a plane takeoff at the end of the movie from the air.

Planes are Catalina PBY, old Golderg Mirage 550 kit, HOB decathlon, Pondside kit, and an SR Batteries cuttie.

Quins7-14.wmv (1 min 5 sec)

Thiefvalleyresmovie!.wmv (1 min 48 sec)

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I finally managed to snap a cellphone pic. I'll bring my little video camera sometime maybe in the future...

I'm having a hard time organizing all my stuff here so I'm going to make a little thread just for my water flying adventures.

Here is the area we found up in the mountains, and an on board cam on the water on my Cutie:

CUTIEONFLOATS_FIX.MPG (1 min 13 sec)

And a pilots view of the area:

floatdreamland.AVI (0 min 11 sec)

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4/19/2010

I did my first full-scale solo flight today! 3 full stop landings in an old Cessna 150!!! I'm totally psyched

Well a package arrived for me today!!!!!!!

I have everything I need minus servos. The bad news is that my next $150 needs to go to headsets for my full-scale aviation adventures. The good news I guess is that flying of any kind (except while on skis or a bicycle) is totally awesome!

I built a Cutie already and it is a marvelous plane (A+ build and A+ flier, the most easy flying, and yet most capable 3 channel plane I've ever twiddled the sticks to), I'm looking forward to building its aileron brother (I decided the Cutie is female and this one will be male). How about the name Orporca?

I'll follow some of the original pattern, except blue with white sunbursts, with blue on top and white on bottom.

http://www.srbatteries.com/acropro.htm

Here is place for all the flying pics I'll take. I forgot the good camera so all I have today are crappy cellphone pics.

Here's my Cutie. I seems to get flown more than any other plane, just because it is small, easy to transport, easy to fly, and penetrates the wind pretty well considering the dihedral and weight.

It flew the maiden voyage the day after Christmas (because I had some time off work) It has 111 landings at 12.5 hours. The power system I've settled on is 3s A123 2300 cells and an old AXI outrunner I had laying around. Right on stock weight at 27.5oz, solid climb performance, and about 30min on a battery.

Highly recommend to anyone looking for an extremely well made lazer cut kit complete with all good hardware (and by good I mean the stuff I usually go to the LHS and buy), solid flying 3 channel plane.

Here's where I'm at. I used the plans found in my other blog (if anyone cares...)

I always enjoy looking at pictures posted by others who show their building/repair/storage area. Here is mine. We have 3 of the four people living here actively participating in flying.

There a building room in the basement with one work bench, two tables, and a shorter longer surface with the charging area. All of the planes have at least seen flight time at some point.

I posted a little while ago about building floats from plans. I've got them built, but am a little puzzled as to how to do the water rudder. Does anyone have any ideas or links to threads on this?

Thanks.

So, one of the two receiver wires on a 8 channel Airtronics receiver (2.4ghz) had 1" cut off when being opened out of a package. Can an inch of protective plastic coating be cut off (making it a little shorter overall than its twin), can it be soldered back on, or does it need to be sent in to Airtronics?

I'm looking to build a set of floats for my Partenavia (~53 oz). I've looked a little online, but haven't come up with much. I can buy a kit for $40 but would like it if I could just buy plans, since I don't think they're too complicated.

Any ideas?

Well, I've flown a skimmer for at least 12 years. It is the plane that was sacrificed in order to go from flying solo with help nearby just in case to flying confidently by my self, and plenty of hard landings went into that process...

And being the smart guy that I am, that was dads plane! I then built my own, powered by a magnetic mayhem car motor with a MAS 3:1 gearbox spinning a 12x8 prop, supplied by 7 1250scr nicad cells. I think it came in around the estimated 44oz.

Needless to say, all the new lithium battery technology and affordable outrunners (and controllers) have been very exciting, and I'm just now getting my skimmer converted. I built it with a bolt on tail, so I took that off to modify the front of the fuselage to fit the fatter motor and sheet off where the battery used to go (since now all the weight needs to be further forward). New estimated weight: 30oz.

I'm re-covering it right now with nitrate dope and sailplane fabric, which always starts out "this isn't as bad as I remember it" but then I start to change my mind. This blurb is merely a motivational tool...

I'll put some pictures on when I'm finished this weekend.

Here it is!

Added pics 6/12/09