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Vacation + Logbook of a Weekend Flyer
I left sunny southern AZ for a couple of weeks over Christmastime. The only two birds that went with me were my PZ Micro Cessna, and my Blade MCX. Both suffered during the trip. The MCX . . . needs a new inner shaft with head, and I've not been able to find any in the LHSes I've looked in so far. The Cessna's problems were fixed with a Vapor prop-shaft.
I gave the gift of RC for Christmas. A new Ember2 + a handy nearby park = A new RC addict. I'm so proud. I can now say I've bought planes from LHSes in three states now. Arizona, New Mexico, and Delaware. From the East Coast comes a Dumas Waco ARE kit . . . which will eventually get shipped back to me from my relatives. From New Mexico, a GWS Spitfire, which I picked up for $100. It was receiver-ready, and the previous owner had converted it to brushless. I'd initially passed it by until I picked up the Dumas kit. Then I did some quick mental math, and realized there were probably $150 worth of parts (2 HS-81 servos, an HS-65 servo, a 1000 mAH LiPo, plus an inexpensive brushless motor and ESC) in the Spitfire. Soooo . . . I decided to buy the Spitfire . . . as a donor plane for the Dumas. Since the Spitfire was meant to live a short life, I scrounged up the cheapest receiver I could for it (Free! It was the 72 MHz RX that originally came with my Art-Tech P51D.) This leads us to: Logbook of a Weekend Flyer 3 - The Weekend of 10 and 11 January After stuffing in the RX, trying to figure out which combination of the eight or so total trim levels on the TX would level the control surfaces, and marveling at the modeling clay packed into the glued-on motor cover plus the 1.5 ounces of lead taped to the nose, I took the Spitfire to the local schoolyard. Those goofy GWS wheels looked thin enough to roll through the multiple football-fields worth of dead grass I had to choose from. So, I tried a grass ROG. The tail came up, and I applied up elevator to pin it back down, and gave it more power. Whoops, too much up elevator. The plane jumped into the air with its nose pitched up nearly 60 degrees. I narrowly averted the initial stall, and the Spitfire rocked its wings in a poor approximation of a high-alpha harrier. Finally, it picked a wing to stall on, flopped over, and went in nose-first. It took way less time to happen than it did to write about. Ahahaha . . . I . . . uhh . . . meant for that to happen. Yeah. So the Spitfire was meant to be a donor plane, but letting it go with just a kitting on maiden offends my sensibilities. Plus, all those breaks were clean, except for the stick mount having popped out the front of the airplane, and half the original prop being lost to posterity. So out came the foam-safe CA and kicker, and WAGging the motor mount back into place. And then I went right back to the schoolyard. Total repair time? About an hour. This time, I took off from the paved track. The first flight was . . . exciting. My eyeballed trimming did not result in a plane that could fly hands-off. A few passes for in-flight trimming fixed that, and the Spitfire tore up the sky. For a small plane, it goes like a bat out of you-know-where, turns on a dime, and does everything one would like a warbird to do. I brought her back down again, and flew her a couple more times. Of course this means I have a problem. Now I don't have the heart to gut the Spitfire! |
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