43 Grupo 2012 (4 min 36 sec)

First: Entering Indiana harbor with my barge empty.

BP Whiting (4 min 11 sec)

Second: Entering loaded with ~17' of draft.

BP Whiting 2 (3 min 30 sec)

...Continue Reading

A few weeks ago, I snatched up a good deal on here of the RC model tug the South Hampton. I've been toying with picking one of these tugs for some time now, but more often than not, the model has been out of stock at various US retailers. Anyway, I now have one and the upgrades have begun.

My ultimate goal is to have a tug that operates much like a real tug. Probably the biggest and most expensive upgrade is to have the tugs motors to be independently operated much like the are on the tug I operate at work. I plan on doing this with the help of a Robbe F-14 radio and two ESC's. I also want to have a working tow winch to tow barge(s) that I'll be making myself in the coming months. Lastly, the fendering of the model, IMHO, is cheesy and the tires had to go.

As the title states, this will be slow upgrade process. After all here in NH we are in the dead of winter so it'll be a while before this boat will hit any water other than my bath tub....Continue Reading

This morning, a buddy of mine and I hit my favorite lake to get in some end of the season float flying. Both of us have similar setups on our Hobby Zone Super cubs: E-Flite Park 480 1020KV motors, with motor mounts from: http://www.customrcparts.com/ stock type servos, Electricfly ESC's. Our radios are differ though, he flies on 72mHz and myself on the 2.4 gHz.

As you might imagine, the Park 480 is extreme over kill in the power department, that being said, we wouldn't have it any other way. Take-off's with wheels can be done in very short order (3-4 feet) and with floats around 5 feet. (See pics below for demonstration of such capability.) Flight times if being conservative with the throttle can be stretched to atleast 20 min. Vertical is near unlimited, and one of these days, I'll get a pic of my Cub hovering (yep, it can do that).

Anway, I hope you enjoy the pics....Continue Reading

Well, this past weekend I took the family to see the 2010 Maine Jet rally. Overall I thought it was a decent show. I was pretty disappointed with how far back the spectators had to be, but I also understand the safety concerns. This being said, my 200mm lens wasn't "strong" enough for many quality inflight pics. Oh well, hope you enjoy the ones I got....Continue Reading

For those that might have missed it, the company I work for, Hornbeck Offshore was featured in this evenings news on CBS.

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?...ted;photovideo

One question that is asked frequently is: "How do I protect my Alfa model decals?" Well there are a number of ways, but the following links below are to a number of posts explaining what I do to the apply and protect the decals. These links are from a couple years ago in the Alfa Model Spitfire thread. Hopefully, this wil be of help and of course any questions or comments are always welcome.


Spitfire thread:
https://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=652418
The entire discussion starts on page 11. The links below are directly to my posts with discriptions and photos.

https://www.rcgroups.com/forums/show...&postcount=164

https://www.rcgroups.com/forums/show...&postcount=168

https://www.rcgroups.com/forums/show...&postcount=168

https://www.rcgroups.com/forums/show...&postcount=209

So get this RC Groupers: On Thursday, while I was out and about running some errands an amazing twist of fate, luck and whatever else happened to me. Long story short, I was driving by the local airport. As I passed, I noticed that one of the hangar doors were opened with what appeared to be a Extra 300 inside. Turns out after chatting with the owner for a few minutes it was actually an Extra 200. Also from the disccussion, I had previously met her over ten years ago at another airport with a different areobatic plane, a Zlin. Anyway, she had been waiting for a friend who wanted to go for a ride in her plane. Well the friend, apparently had some sort of a miscommunication with her and was elsewhere. As if reading my mind, she offered to take me for a ride. As you might have guessed, it didn't take much consideration on my part. As my luck (atleast this time) would have it, I had my camera with me for my wife to take some pics of me prior to the flight and myself to take some in-flight pics from in the cockpit. I hope you enjoy!

..and if this isn't already amazing enough, she has offered to take me flying again hopefully in the next week or two. ...Continue Reading

Yesterday afternoon, I had some fun driving my tugboat and tooting the whistle(we don't actually have a whistle on this boat, just a horn ). I had to bring "my" barge from Yonkers Anchorage in the Hudson river to along side a ship in lower Bayridge Anchorage. The reason for this was to lighter the ship so that it could proceed to somewhere else in the harbor as its draft was probably more than what is allowed for it's final destination. The weather wasn't the greatest...cloudy skies, and kinda gloomy. Thankfully it wasn't windy yet. NYC and southern New England was expecting a major snow storm that evening and morning. The snow is falling pretty good as I write this too. Anyway, here are the pics. Enjoy! Questions and comments always welcome. ...Continue Reading

This is the first of my 2008-2009 winter projects. I decided to see if I could mount floats to my E-Flite Mini Pulse. My MP despite being an excellent plane really hasn't seen much use in probably close to a year. I'm hoping that this will put the plane back on the front burner for the 2009 summer season. Anyway, I picked up some floats from a guy who posted an add for some semi custom balsa floats on this site(for the life of me I can't find the link. If you want the guys email. I do still have that. The rear mounting bracket is simply another MP landing gear bracket I ordered from my LHS. The bolt pattern for the gear mounts is the same for the wing mounts. Thusly I just ran the bolts with some washers though the rear mount, then the wing, and bolted it all the fuse. I may need to add in a spacer where the gear used to mount to provide some incedence to the wing/floats. Spring time water testing will determind that.
Another add-on the plane was a new 1-3/4" spinner from E-Flite. I previously had an Alfa FW-190 spinner on there, which worked fine, but I like this one a little more. Lastly, I upped the motor from a E-Flite 450 to a 480. I have test flown this off the snow with 100% success. The plane handles the floats just fine. It'll still roll and loop like before and even still knife edge.

Thanks for stopping by, any questions or comments?

Today, after much planning and coordinating around my tugboat work schedule I was able to make my flight. Many thanks need to be given to Frank everyone for all their efforts to make this possible for me. It appears that the next pilot and I are going to meet up on Monday in Keene, NH so he can take it on to Albany, NY.
The Squirt was a very easy and fun plane to fly. I found it to be similar to that of the orginal Park Zone Cub. Anyway, enjoy the pics and be sure to check the other pics I posted in the WAA-08 thread!

Holy moly this is my 5,000th post...but just to prove I don't spend all my free time on the internet, here's a pic of my hangar. Enjoy!

Here you go guys. The rest of the pics....Continue Reading

For while I had been doing my float flying at my local Fish and Game clubs' pond. However, come about mid summer the pond is covered in weeds which makes for quite the challenge to keep the rudder on the float free and clear.
Thankfully my solution is now Merry Meeting Lake in New Durham. This is just another four miles further down the road from my previous spot (or 12 miles from home). The lake claims to be the cleanest in New Hampshire. By the looks of what I have seen, I believe it. The water is unbelieveably clear. Look carefully in the pics and you see what I mean.
The best part, since I took these pics at the lakes' public boat ramp. I had another RC flyer come by and visit with me while I was flying. Turns out, he was inspired to get into the hobby after one of my previous visits. During our conversation, he offered his personal dock out in front of his house for me to fly at in the future. We also talked about winter flying off the frozen lake with skiis. As you can imagine I'm pretty excited about all of this. The next time I go, I'll have to ask him to take some inflight pics for me

After reading how much people liked their Park Zone Vapors, I decided I needed one too. I would have to agree, this a great little plane. For me it really puts the laid back fun back into RC. Much like the Aero Ace did. In less than a week, I have probaby made atleast 35 flights on mine. Thanks to its light weight, the plane is practically unbreakable (due to a crash). I have really enjoyed flying this one. The other night I was out on the my back deck "tormenting" the neighbors cat who was up on her deck. The cat ran out on her back yard and chased the plane like it was some sort of giant moth. The plane was very easy to control and keep just out of the cats' reach. I was having so much fun that I barely had enough juice to fly back to my yard so I could change out the battery.
Another fun thing to do with the plane is to fly with just the tinest bit of breeze, I can then almost hover the plane...sometimes just an inch off the ground. Equally as much fun is just to put the plane into a harrier and hold it still with no relative motion. I can then shake the sticks and make the either of the control surfaces flutter or "wave" to my audience.
The plane isn't with out fault though. It typically takes a couple tries (atleast two) to bind with either the stock controller or the E-Flite CX2 controller I bought the other day on here in the for-sale adds. Once the plane is bound though, she flies just fine and glitch fee.
I'm certain this plane will be in my hangar for some time to come.

Well I made the trek down to Gardner, MA this weekend to check out the New England Jet Rally. Aside from a passing shower the weather was beautiful and so was the flying! I had a great time of day dreaming of when maybe I could afford just one jet much less the three or four that I saw some folks with. I chatted with some of folks including one RC Groups member, Scott Corriveau from MotorFly motors who now goes by the name of: Reaper Blushless. Outstanding products by the way. Check out the monster outrunner below--equivelant to a DA-100 And I got some inside scoop on motors and planes from some of our favorite distributors. Anyway, here are the pics. Enjoy!...Continue Reading

Here's some more pics from this weekends airshow. Enjoy! ...Continue Reading

Well, yesterday after much debate over the weather (they had been predicting thunderstorms generally poor weather) and the risks of spending 50+ bucks on gas to get there and back. I decided to get up early and make trek to the Quonset Point Airshow. Anyway, the airshow was good, but a little weak in comparison to previous shows. The biggest draw for me was to the see the RAF Red Arrows. I took over 500 pics. Anyway here are some of the better ones. I'll try and get some more up in the next day or so. Until then, enjoy! ...Continue Reading

Here's my E-Flite Taylorcraft.

Set-up:
E-Flite 480 940KV
10X8 Prop
Electrifly SS-25 ESC
4 HS-55's
JR Sport Micro RX
TP Extreme V2 2100mAH 3 Cell Lipo

Flight times are around 10-15 min.

Next up, the P-47.

The Setup:
Esskay 400XT Outrunner
Electrifly SS-25 ESC
2 HS-55's
JR Sport Micro RX
TP1320mAH 3 Cell Lipo

Enjoy!