Klutzy day

[thevon]

Sean and I met up at Bald Knob around midday, hoping for some strong SE DSing. The wind wasn’t huge most of the day, plus it was pretty turbulent and no really high speeds were achieved – I think 119mph with the Erwin was the best.

But man, did I have some klutzy bad luck. Firstly I DSed the Reaper for a bit, sussing out the grooves.

First drama of the day was the Nemesis – threw it out and as I headed left past the towers it glitched badly and crash landed on the hill. Bald Knob is a bad place for weird interference. Anyway, only minor damage (minor crack around V-tail bolt) which was patched up on the spot.

Then I put the Wizard together for its first flight since the major repair. It flew just like new, absolutely an amazing slope rocket. DS’ed it for a few loops then the mobile phone rang, and with lots going on with work I answered it, clicked speakerphone, dropped it in the grass and knelt beside it talking while still flying the Wiz. No probs, I do this a lot. Sean must have just landed, so seeing me he called out to ask if I wanted him to fly the plane – I nodded - as he got closer and I was finishing the phone call I went to hand him the radio, steering with the right hand - picked up the phone with the left hand – wanted to turn off the camber slider on the left side so I sort of held the left side of the radio together with the phone cupped in my left hand, as the Wizard suddenly went crazy and flipped and rolled out of the sky, with me stunned and madly trying to regain control. Soon as it crashed I looked down and realized I’d been holding the phone pressed against the back of the radio and said “It must have been the mobile causing interference!”

Terrible disappointment, finding the Wiz’s nose bent and cracked behind the nose cone. After I’d stopped screaming, foaming at the mouth and punching the sky I tried to work out what had gone on. Had I stalled it? I guess we both had doubts about the mobile phone theory, but I switched the Wiz and the Tx back on, dialed Sean on the mobile, then held the phone behind the Tx and BAM!, the servos went crazy. We were pretty surprised. We tried the experiment again with the same result. There’s no doubt that’s what did it.

Anyway I tried to get it fixed on the spot and back in the air. Dribbled thin CA around and soon the nose was straight and fairly solid. One HS65 servo in the nose had stripped and I had a spare so that was an easy fix. I had to really sand the nose to get the cone to fit on, but it was tight so I had to tug the cone hard to remove it and doing so it banged the other servo arm and stripped it too!!! At that point I gave up on the Wiz for the day. I did have spare gearsets but it was just all too sad.

So I got the Nemesis back out and wow, it was impressive. It felt really fast and nippy and it blasted around some DS loops fabulously. It’s so quick. We then decided it would be good to put ballast in so I pulled the wing off and put full ballast in – first time I’ve used the lot. I was aware that it might be less stable when slowed down, but I expected it to feel really solid as it gained speed. Not so. It felt really twitchy. I played around for a few minutes both frontside and DS but decided it was wisest to land and check it. The extra weight means more inertia so the flaps didn’t pull it up as quickly - it had plenty of speed close to me, so I let it soar overhead and turned around to land it higher on the ridge – nice approach but it dipped a wing and cartwheeled hard, breaking the areas where both of the V-tail horns are bonded.

At this point Sean had made a cup of tea so we sat down and commiserated as I turned to grab something I kicked the back of an aileron on the Nemesis and … you guessed it … stripped the 3rd HS65 for the day.

So that was the bad bits. The best fun I had all day was gunning for Sean when he was DSing my Reaper. I had just been trying to carve in one spot and was fighting the plane the whole way, then Sean had a go and instantly the circles looked smooth and fast! It’s truly amazing witnessing Sean’s flying skills close up. He was pushing the Reaper so low and it regularly got sucked down and there were some impressive saves!

Sean’s Erwin was, as always, slick fast and impressive, but the standout prize of the day has to go to Sean’s “Mi-Jet” which is a balsa fuse, foam/ obechi plane that his Dad built for him around 1993 (I think). Sean spent ages DSing it and it was really impressive. This thing has flexy pushrods and servos that are so slow their speed is calculated in seconds, not tenths. However he reckons it’s the easiest thing to DS he’s ever flown and should be sold as a DS trainer! Mostly he flew quite small smooth circles in the clean pocket of air just near the top of the ridge, but when the wind got up later he tried to wind it up and got 82mph out of it!

Finally late in the arvo we called it quits – it really sucked in a way because the wind was getting really strong – but we were having trouble seeing the planes.

I tried to avoid the inevitable post-carnage depression as I drove home and thought – yup, I’m one of those really nice guys who’s obsessed with this stuff and spends far too much money and time on it, but I’ll never be good at it! But I’m OK with that. Maybe I’ll cut back on flying and spend more time watching – I seem to get a kick out of that.

[jirvin4505]

Wow Andrew you are certainly experiencing the highs and lows.

>standout prize of the day has to go to Sean’s “Mi-Jet” which is a balsa fuse, foam/ obechi plane


Nostalgia Rant....Slope Kippers is what we once called them
Interesting conclusion. Laying awake thinking the other night (as you do post cardiac event) I was thinking about the disposable composite again. The fastest build model (time to build not fast flying) I use to put together in my TOTALLY obsessed days was a local version of the Sig Ninja (fibreglass fus foam core wings)

I would layup the fuz in the morning and while it was curing ready to join I would cut foam cores and sheet them. Have lunch and then join the fuz and sheeted foam core wings. My friends who I would build this model for would then spend weeks covering the wings and painting the Fuz

I wonder what the mijet aifoil was? Seems like a candidate for the slope trash disposeable model??

Originally the Ninja had Epler374 however we found it flew better in both light air and big air with RG15. My mate ended up bagging his RG15 wings and with his heavier Ninja could still outfly my lightweight E374 model in light airs. That was one of those days i started believing in Airfoils. Mind you the E374 could outfly the zaggis in still conditions.


So maybe the disposeable slope trash plane is a fibreglass fuz with either a bagged or sheeted wing?

Thinking of the progress we have made in composites the time to build would even be less?

Fibreglass fuz - painted in the mold with wetseam join - a mornings work.

One piece bagged wing with painted mylars - an afternoons work.


The point of all this..... The best cure for >post-carnage depression< an easy to build and repair model?

Thanks for the bandwidth - Sorry Andrew a little off topic

cheers jeff

[sean]

It was a fun day yesterday Andrew. Try not to get too disheartened by the damage. There was some real bad luck there with interference from various sources.

The Mijet was certainly a surprise. Here's a pic:



Dad built it in 1990 to be our "aileron trainer" after learning the basics with a rudder-elevator Stepp 2. We started flying glow powered models soon after it was built so it never got much flying in, I think two flights, flown by more experienced pilots at Long Reef before being retired to dad's shed for 18 years or so.

Jeff, I've no idea what the aerofoil is, it looks pretty strange compared to modern foils - the thickest point is only a little back from the LE. If we could figure out a way to trace it I'd love to put it into Profili to see how it compares to modern foils.

I suspect the key to its easy handling in turbulence is to do with planform - big tail feathers, a slightly forward CG and a lowish aspect ratio, all of which would tend to dampen any disturbances quickly. Compare this to modern moldies which tend to have barely adequate tails and ultra-rearward CGs in the name of outright efficiency. It's also quite heavy at 1150g.

One thing I'm not sure about is how it would go DSing in light air - I suspect its lack of efficency will make it a bit hard to DS in those conditions, when a plane with good energy retention gets you back out to the front when you make a mistake on the back. The conditions we had yesterday are pretty rare. Also the fact that it wasn't fast meant it was easy to keep it in the very small sweet zone on this particular hill.

IMO something along these lines with a few key improvements could make an excellent DS trainer. I think a similar planform, with a bigger vertical tail, modern aerofoil, smaller fuse and quick, strong composite construction would be pretty ideal.

[jirvin4505]

Thread hijac .....(sorry Andrew .. will shift this to the disposable model thread soon)
Hey Sean run the ruler over the model. Root, tip, w/span, distance from LE wing to LE tail etc. reckon I already have a mold that would be a starter.

cheers jeff

[sean]

Will do Jeff.

Here are some vids from the day. They were shot with my digital camera so nothing spectacular.

Erwin early in the day. Speeds hovering around 100mph, wind was only about 10 or 15kt at this stage, as far as I can remember:
www.vimeo.com/1808784

Erwin later in the day. Speeds about the same. Wind was much stronger but much more turbulence in the DS zone which really hurts the speed. Video doesn't show it but the Erwin was really getting knocked around in the bottom turn, on the day you could hear a sort-of, rumbling, tearing sound all the way through the bottom turn as it flies through the turbulence. On a good day you only hear that passing into and out of the dead air. Half way through this vid I try a new line flying a long way down into the valley and the speed straight away jumps by 20-30mph.
www.vimeo.com/1809054

Mijet:
www.vimeo.com/1809217

[Vanders]

Andrew........what can I say mate, your a pioneer of finding all possible things that could possibly go wrong, I salute you!!!! With you finding that a mobile phone held against the back of a Tx could cause a plane to crash, I commend your sacrifice mate.

Sorry to say but you had me chuckling while reading your post, if only because they're the sort of things that seem to happen to me as well, not funny really, just because it means more time in the shed repairing.

Sean, would have loved to see the old girl doing laps, interested to see what terminal carnage speed would be for it?? Have to get that on video if it ever happens.

Jeff, the Sig Ninja was my first ever slope soarer, I loved that built up ply fuse with foam cored wings, I've often though I'd like to have another just for old time sake.

[drcuzo]

Sean

Can we get Pete to cut some wings and a fuse from the Mijet. With ballast it might be a great DS trainer!

We'll call the HisJet

Steve

[ezza]

Great story with the Mijet Sean. It still looks pristine(like all your models), after 18 years.

Your camera takes good videos. Thanks for posting.

Eric

[sf2]

Interesting thought vanders about the phone, I fly big jets run on computers that are periodically affected by phones on board and that's really not funny.

[mikey100]

Hi guys. You seem to be the ones to ask- " Where do you buy the hand-held radar gun and how much? Cheers.

[felix]

Wow! i felt like a tool tonight when I was rehinging the bee's elevons. Doing the sensible thing, I was of course cutting TOWARDS myself and hacked my thumb up, put a hole in my shirt n put a nice little nick on my stomach. Of course the better half had to come down to drag me out of the shed for dinner to find me looking like a train wreck victim and the shed looking like a murder scene lol (funny coz I spent the afternoon adjusting a RUNNING bandsaw with confidence but a small razor made a huge mess?!)…… but Andrew you’re a menace! May have to start calling you frank spencer at this rate soon

All laughs aside mate that’s a seriously bad run of luck but i'm sure you’ll be belting around in circles again in no time mate.



btw sean that looks like a top little model and sounds like a good flyer to boot.

[thevon]

Mikey I got a Prospeed gun from Soaring USA in the States. It was around $800 delivered. They're an in-demand item and I think I could sell it for almost the same now. They're more expensive now - price has gone up and dollar has gone down.

Felix, that's an old one. I've chopped the end off a finger or thumb doing that several times now! But seriously, cutting along a steel straight edge when you're pressing it down hard with the other hand is an easy way to remove chunks of yourself.