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How It's Made Sailplane Episode
If you missed it on TV, just give it some time and it shows up on youtube. No wonder full scale sailplanes cost a mint.
Video 1: Starting at about 5:39 http://www.youtube.com/watch? v=lwiF8pi26Nc Video 2: Continued http://www.youtube.com/watch? v=VxhwkM0ZXRM |
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Eagles and Pesky Crows - The air battle
I got this from a soaring pilot, Jack from a Chicago Club Group (SOAR95). I know you will like this one.
Lee -------- Original Message -------- The Great Air Battle I got this from a friend who runs a 2000 acre corn farm up around Barron WI, not far from Oshkosh. He used to fly F4Es and F-16s for the Guard and participated in the first Gulf War. Submitted for your enjoyment, and as a reminder that there are other great, magnificent flyers around. --- I went out to plant corn for a bit to finish a field before tomorrow morning and witnessed The Great Battle. A golden eagle--big bastard, about six foot wingspan-- flew right in front of the tractor. It was being chased by three crows that were continually dive bombing it and pecking at it. The crows do this because the eagles rob their nests when they find them. At any rate, the eagle banked hard right in one evasive maneuver, then landed in the field about 100 feet from the tractor. This eagle stood about 3 feet tall. The crows all landed too and took up positions around the eagle at 120° apart, but kept their distance at about 20 feet from the big bird. The eagle would take a couple steps towards one of the crows and they'd hop backwards and forward to keep their distance. Then the reinforcements showed up. I happened to spot the eagle's mate hurtling down out of the sky at what appeared to be approximately Mach 1.5. Just before impact the eagle on the ground took flight, and the three crows which were watching the grounded eagle also took flight thinking they were going to get in some more pecking on the big bird. The first crow being targeted by the diving eagle never stood a snowball's chance in hell. There was a mid-air explosion of black feathers and that crow was done. The diving eagle then banked hard left in what had to be a 9G climbing turn, using the energy it had accumulated in the dive, and hit crow #2 less than two seconds later. Another crow dead. The grounded eagle, which was now airborne and had an altitude advantage on the remaining crow, which was streaking eastward in full burner, made a short dive then banked hard right when the escaping crow tried to evade the hit. It didn't work - crow #3 bit the dust from about 20 feet altitude. This aerial battle was better than any airshow I've been to, including the warbirds show at Oshkosh! The two eagles ripped the crows apart and ate them on the ground, and as I got closer and closer working my way across the field, I passed within 20 feet of one of them as it ate its catch. It stopped and looked at me as I went by and you could see in the look of that bird that it knew who's Boss Of The Sky. What a beauty! |
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Lee, that sounds too cool to be true. That would sure be something to witness.
Welcome back. I saw you driving around town on Tuesday. One can't miss "Thermal" for a license plate. Scott |
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Lee,
Good to hear from you again. You may not remember me but you taught me to fly about 18 years ago, Eric Heinz. My Dad Gary, and my two younger twin brothers were all learning to fly that summer. Anyway you may remember that after my solo, on the next flight I specked out my Gentle lady and had to put it into a spin twice to get it down lower, the flight lasted 45 minutes. Talk about wrecking the challenge of a long flight on your first day. Anyway I am thinking about getting my stuff updated and getting back in it. Hope to see you at a flying field sometime soon. Eric |
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Hi Eric,
Watch our Who's Flying at the Anderson Sod Farm thread. We may be out this weekend probably favoring Sunday. Stop on out if you get a chance to fire up the soaring bug again. https://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=951250 Scott |
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Congratulations!
I believe we have a new celebrity in the club. From what I can gather from reading the posts in the Polecat thread, Scott won the sportsman class!
I haven't seen the full results but there was a photo with results through round 9 with Scott in the lead and the last post had Denny congratulating Scott on his win. I'm not sure where Ryan ended up but he wasn't doing too bad after round 9 either. I'm looking forward to hearing the stories when they get back. Way to go guys! Garth |
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Radio Problems - Looking for Ideas
Last Saturday I was flying my Psyko or Psycho or perhaps the Psycho was fling the Psyko . The plane did some unexpected aerobatics when I was like 2,000 feet up and coming out of a thermal using flaps. When I got ready to land and I dropped flaps again, the plane turned sharply because one flap didn't come down. So I landed with a long glide and did some walking.
Upon checking this out I saw that the right flap would come down with the normal speed about 3 seconds after the command was given. The left flap came down right away as expected. When I got it home, I pulled the servo and checked it with an Ace servo cycler. The right servo works fine other than a few rough spots on the pot. Checked the other side while I was at it and that works fine also while directly connected to the servo cycler. So I check for resistance in the wires to the servo to the wing joiner and that looks fine also. By putting the wings on the fuselage I confirmed that the problem still exists. I pull out the receiver still connected and pull the channel 5 pin (R flap) and connect that to the servo cycler. Now the problem doesn't exist. Putting it back into the receiver confirms that the problem is still there. So where do I look next? The transmitter or the receiver? I wonder if Galaxy can look at the transmitter signal and know? Lee |
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Sounds odd. I'm not 100% clear on the last part. It sounds like the test is repeatable. (?)
"I pull out the receiver still connected and pull the channel 5 pin (R flap) and connect that to the servo cycler. Now the problem doesn't exist. Putting it back into the receiver confirms that the problem is still there." It doesn't look like you've tried putting a different servo on channel 5. Maybe find a spare servo of any sort and go through the flap movements while watching the servo travel and determine if the glitch is still there. Make sure the servo wire polarities are correct as I don't know if you are running new or old Airtronics or ?? The dead spots sound suspicious. It's hard to believe just one servo channel (in the RX or TX) would be bad, but could be possible. If the problem still exists with the spare servo, find a spare receiver or other plane (with the same TX and Psycho model memory) to check out how servo channel #5 reacts to rule out or confirm it's a RX issue. These are a couple of things I can think of before looking at the TX output. |
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Polecat Challenge 2009 Report by a VAM Pilot
Garth,
The final scores haven't been posted yet, but I will try to post something here about Ryan and I at the Polecat Challenge 2009. I'm still a little exhausted and recovering. It was a blast as usual and everyone can read many of the flight reports in the thread. The last few pages are post-contest so more detailed flying condition comments will be there. This contest was definitely not a slam dunk for people to complete their tasks. There were a few select rounds with "stupid air", but more so with light lift and some strong sink to make it very good contest conditions. I'll definitely be interested in seeing the flyoff round individual scores because there was some strong sink that seemed to be everywhere for everyone and even the highest launchers were in the 35-50 second range on a flight for a task that allows 3 scores, 3min max, 3 throws in a 10 minute window. But as Bruce Davidson mentions in each clinic he gives, "Just fly the task". Anyway, great people, tasty food, competition at all levels, and all around an awesome event. Jeff Carr from NC won the expert class flyoffs. Ryan advanced his flying this year and took 11th out of 31 in Sportsman. Me, something happened and took 1st in Sportsman. 6th or 7th overall (~61 competitors) in the preliminaries. It was an honor to be able to have some of the top pilots in the country time for me. The main thing was just flying consistent. In hindsight I should have maybe have flown Expert, but its hard to tell with our short flying season before this contest to build flying confidence and the level of competition at this event is phenomenal. Taking home "the wood" is a bonus, but what people remember most is the camaraderie and walking away with lessons learned to hopefully fly or time better at the next contest. https://www.rcgroups.com/forums/show...0#post12471866 |
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Last edited by szastoupil; Jun 17, 2009 at 07:11 PM.
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Lee,
Don't you just love these little challenges! If you haven't tried this yet, perhaps plug the right flap into the left flap port on the Rx and the left one into the right port and see if the problem changes sides. At least you have been able to get out to fly. It has been crazy here. I have flown the DLG twice and have not yet flown a winched model this year. In fact, the new 3M isn't quite finished yet. Duey |
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Quote:
Duey, I have not heard if there is a Madison hlg contest or not. |
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Funky Servo Activity
Congratulations on your finishings, Scott and Ryan.
Sorry you haven't been able to fly, Duey. Scott and Duey recommended plugging a spare servo into channel 5 of the existing receiver. Results: Spare servo behaves normally. Spare servo is analog and flap servo is digital. I went back to the right wing plugged into fuse and have the problem back. I think I should try swapping out the Hitec receiver with another brand. This could be tricky since it has to be a JR or Hitec receiver with the matching crystal. This sounds very weird...a conditional problem. When conditions A and B are present C happens. Any other ideas? Thanks for those you mentioned. Lee |
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I think you missed Duey's last recommendation. Swap the flap servo plugs around. ie. ch 5 to X and X to 5. Exercise flaps and report results.
I don't know what X is for Airtronics or whatever you are using. I'm a non conformist Multiplex user, so I don't have to be told which servos need to be plugged where. |
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