Sky jets video of the Gia-Normans at night.

Gia Normans at Watts 2014 (4 min 16 sec)

We attended Watts Over Owatanna last week. Had a great time out there. Awesome field, awesome food, and awesome folks!

Just so happens that they decided Gia-Norman was the best night flyer. He turns into "Zombie Norman" at night due to 19 meters of green LEDs inside of him, and then of course his red lit up eyes.

We put a watt meter on his lights... over 7 amps and more than 80 watts! Thats quite a bit just for lights.

Laine.

We have had soooo much fun flying these things all together. What a hoot!

After a few successful flights, he now has earned his cow spots. Fun little plane to fly. At 27" span and light as a feather, he still does pretty good in the wind too.

I put a 1400kv blue wonder motor on him with a 3 blade prop. 2 or 3S 500s seem to both do fine.

Laine

Got my Be Be Norman from www.racores.com finished. I still need to add the cow spots to him, but dang he's cute.

27" span depron with a 85 watt outrunner and a Castle Creations Tbird 18.

I now have all 3 sizes of Normans from 27" up to the big Gia-Norman at 7 feet!

I love taking these to shows. Folks can't get enough of the cute buggers.

Laine

What's more fun than a fast warbird? A fast warbird at NIGHT!

Finished up this overpowered GWS Corsair night flyer. It's heavy, but it flys soooooo good. Just don't land slow! 75mph or so on this little sucker at night is a hoot.

Laine

Just finished up this quickie 500 plane on electric power. Using a Castle Creations Vertigo heli motor (1175kv) and a 7x9 prop on 6S, the calculator says 65 amps and for speed it says "holy crap"!

This thing should be a screamer. Looking forward to the maiden flight. I'll test it all out on 4S and a 8x5 prop first. Then I'll go up from there.

Hopefully I won't find the limits of the airframe!

Laine

Just finished my 73" Sig a Extra 300XS that I got from Fireman Bill. Power 160' 10S 5000 and of course, a Castle 120.

...Continue Reading

NEW EVENT AT WATTS OVER OWATANA.

As you all know, Team Cobra and the CrashCast fellas that will be there tend to come up with "interesting" thing to do at events. Well, this year at Watts is no exception!

We are gonna do Be Be Norman pylon racing! Everyone is invited to join in. There are no formal rules, any power system is fine, any mods are fine. Just be prepared for anything! We may do a "slow race" (slowest plane around the course) we may do "speed" (yeah, speed and Norman in the same breath). Anyway, we are sure to have a good time.

I plan to put LEDs in mine for night time fun too. So, light yours up!

We WILL have some PRIZES for this event too! Good stuff, not some junk. Maybe fastest, slowest, "coolest" who knows.

The point is, go to www.racores.com and build a be be Norman so you can join in!

If you won't make the event, that's ok too. We will give away some kind of prize on the CrashCast prior to watts for the "best Be Be Norman". Submit your photos to the CrashCast listeners page on Facebook and we will pick a winner!

You have time! Get to it!

Laine

Well, there ya have it! We won the best new airplane award at SEFF this year! The 7 builders, CAD man Joel, and laser guru RA Cores kicked butt!

Jim (www.racores.com) is taking orders now and compiling power system info for people who want to build one. It's an easy build. BIG, time consuming and pricey to outfit, but easy. I really enjoyed the build.

If you think your not ready or skilled enough, we had three first time kit builders in on the first seven that went to SEFF. They had no problems. A couple questions, yes, but no problem. It goes together so effortlessly it's hard to make a mistake.

So, if you want something BIG that will get a TON of attention, you just gotta build one of these monsters!

Here is our latest madness! 84.35" wingspan Gia-Normans! 7 of them!

On mobile, so I'll be short. Designed by me, CAD by Metro GTI, laser cut by RA Cores. Two piece fuselage, three piece wing, 1500-3000 watt power system, ailerons, rudder and dual elevator servos.

The laser cut Kits will be available at www.racores.com very soon, (a couple weeks) and I think he is taking pre orders now.

Laine....Continue Reading

After 21 years, 3 months and 29 days (as of Dec 31 2013) I will officially be retired from the US Army. Lucky for me, I accumulated about 110 days of leave. What does that mean? It means I started my new civilian job on 7 October, and I will get full pay from both jobs until the 1st of the year! After that, I'll receive my retirement pay.

As of 7 oct, I am an employee of Midwest Medair in Nebraska. I was hired as a line pilot flying a EC 135 P2+ helicopter. Single pilot IFR, doing "life flight" for the entire state plus more.

The job and people and aircraft are GREAT! My schedule is sweet too. 12 hours a day for 7 days, then off for 7 days. How can ya argue with 2 weeks off each month! I'm certainly not upset about the salary either!

Currently the company is awaiting receipt of a second aircraft. It is scheduled to go to Hastings, Nebraska (about 50 miles from the farm I grew up on). That is where I am going to be stationed at. So, the wife and I are searching for houses, and I am slowly moving my fleet of real cars and Rc stuff to Nebraska.

It's a big transition, but it's one I have been enjoying so far. Once we get settled in our new home, I'll get back to work on designing and building planes again.

I'll be around.

Laine

Sorry I been so lazy/busy and not updated anything here lately. In short, I've built a Hangar 9 Corsair, and 3 quad copters since SEFF. That's it! Not normal for me at all. Heck, I've only gone out flying twice since SEFF and I live 100 yards from my runway.

However, as I said, I'm finally retiring! No more Army, no more shaving every day, no more formations to practice for the next formation, no more meetings about the meetings! I'm almost DONE!

Officially, 31 December 2013 is my last day. However, I have a ton of leave saved up, so my last day of work is 4 October! More to follow on that later.

I'm currently on leave until the 1st of Oct. then, I go to work for 3 days. Here I sit, in Virginia, at my good buddy FiremanBills house waiting for EOT to start on Saturday!

Bill and I just ran a 200 mile race from Charlottesville Va to Jamestown Va on Friday-Saturday. We each ran around 20 miles of the 200. Talk about challenging! It's Monday and I'm still walking funny, but we smoked that race!

Anyway, I got some planes to get ready while Bill is at work today. I better get to it!

Laine

So, the FMP was an idea I came up with a few weeks ago. One plane, 5 pilots. Each pilot gets one control on the plane. So, I designed and built this 52" span airplane from EPP, powered it by a Eflite Power 25, Castle Phoenix 80, and put in a Castle BEC Pro to power the 5 recievers necessary to make this happen.

With Crash Hancock on throttle, Bill Sorrell on ailerons, Mason Sorrell on rudder, Tim King on bomb drop and myself on elevator we did it! In fact, we did it so well, that we were asked to fly it in the noon demos at SEFF on Friday and Saturday! There are various videos and pictures of the flights around you tube and RCG.

Well, on Saturday during the demo, we added a loop, a roll, and a touch and go to the mix. All went off without a hitch. The plan was if the plane survived, we would call out Mac Hodges himself and a group of professionals to give it a go. So, we did just that. 3D Hobby Shop, Extreme Flight, Castle Creations and Futaba all sent out a professional to join Mac in flying th FMP in the demo.

They did an outstanding job of it too! Here is a video of thier flight.

The 5 man plane at SEFF 2013 (2 min 13 sec)

the Hemi Cuda by lmopar69 (6 min 6 sec)

This little 24" forward swept wing is a rocket! With a HET 4w I runner and 4s 3000s it zipping along at about 110mph. It's no light weight, at 2lbs AUW, but it flys great!

Laine

Making this Cuda for a customer in Florida. I think he will like it in red and blue with a little white in the nose and on the vert. stab. Obviously its not quite done yet, but with any luck, I'll finish it up for him tomorrow so I can get it shipped out this week.

Laine.

I designed this little twin awhile back. Finally got a video of it. Does some funky spins! Eventually I'll get used to it and see what else I can make it do. But, for now, its cool to see it spin like a top.

Laine.

The Twin (2 min 2 sec)

Been a long time (for me anyway) since I have flown or built anything. Felt a bit under the weather today so instead of working on my real cars, I put together a plane I had cut out a few months ago.

Introducing The Challenger.

41" span
Mega 16/15/3
3S 3300

About 100mph. Not insane fast, but still a lot of fun.

Laine.

Good old Fireman Bill wanted a Cuda, so I put one together for him and had a buddy airbrush it a bit for me. Turned out great and we had a ball flying them in combat out at Hodges.

Laine.