I wrote this for the RC Groups Aussie DS forum and am duplicating it here. Brace yourselves for a long report! This DS addict is bubbling over with lots of DS goss. If Womans Day can crap on for pages about Britney’s alleged new boyfriend, wait till you see how much I can rave about the day it all came together to topple a few PB’s at Tallows Ridge for me (AvB), Eric (Ezza) and Sean (Dymanic). Six amazing DS ships hitting the skies in rare conditions, lots of wild airtime, lots of milestones, lots of big frights – it was an action packed day.
Despite being at the coast on holidays for the week, and my wife giving me approval to fly to my heart’s content, I was hanging out for a DS session. Apart from one relaxing fly at Beechmont, the planes sat in the car while it stayed hot and calm all week.
The forecast predicted a SSE change on Friday, which was my last day and we knew it was an outside chance. A fresh SSW wind arrived in the early hours of Friday morning and I tentatively headed off for the 45min drive to Ezza’s place, while Sean was just leaving for a 3 hr trip from Mapleton!
Like all the coast, Byron was packed with holidaymakers. By the time we got to the ridge around 9:30am my time (= 10:30 NSW time) the car parks were full but the wind looked really good – around 25 – 30 knots on my old meter. I’d filled the Nemesis with ballast and I was keen to get it out first, but found I’d left my transmitter on and it was flat. Oh, well! My trannie went on the charger and Ezza put the Kinetic together. At the ramp we double checked, taped the flaps, and stood back. You have to stand behind the flowing air and chuck it hard. It felt like a brick, but when launched off the platform it went up at about 45 degrees. He checked it frontside – all good – then we went backside to DS.
Byron is a freakily dangerous place to DS in many ways. What I’m saying is – don’t even think of flying there unless you’re up to it. Everything is covered in thick scrub – frontside, backside, everywhere. You launch from a wooden viewing platform in the saddle, and you land in the treetops.
To get to the DS flying spot, you launch then walk back along a road behind the ridge, while hovering the plane above the saddle which becomes a smaller and smaller window as you walk back. Until you’re experienced you need someone to hold your shirt while you walk backwards, watching the plane. The lift is strong, the window small, the plane high and it is VERY easy to lose sight of the plane.
When you finally get to the DSing spot, you’re about 150 metres to the west of the saddle and level with it, but you’re also about 25metres below the western crest of the ridge. If you had a radio glitch and your plane misbehaved, you’d be unlikely to see it again, since you couldn’t get back to a view of the frontside. It’s freaky. The first time I went there with my Reaper and Ezza showed me the spot, I felt nauseous from the nerves. No kidding at all.
To make it worse the trees lining the road are now about 6ft higher than my last visit, so you have to clamber up the embankment above the road so you’re looking thru a window in those trees, to see above the trees on the other side. Ridge towering behind you. Million dollar houses below you. Cars driving up and down the roads. Tourists from all round the world walking right under where the plane is screaming and thundering around. The sweet spot for speed was well to the left of the bowl, so the plane occasionally goes out of sight in the bottom turn. And just to add a bit more spice, just when you’re arcing over the saddle, a big 2-seater joyflight glider occasionally pops up over the ridge and sails around, disappearing and reappearing at random. Very relaxing stuff.
Someone who obviously didn’t like the risk complained to the ranger and it was only thru some quick talking and reassurances by Maynard that we were able to keep flying. But to anyone reading this, be warned. Byron is a really risky place. It’s a bit like base jumping off hi-rise buildings. Don’t do it, preferably. If you do, triple check everything and if your plane misbehaves, bail out and land ASAP. Don’t hit anything because amongst your other troubles, RC flying will abruptly be banned for everyone, and possibly at other sites too.
The Kinetic looked very, very fast and was quickly lapping in the 170’s but there were a few scary suck-downs. Ezza started to work it hard, pulling the hairpins closer overhead so the noise got insane. As it got faster both guns had a lot of missed readings, then a 196. There was a nasty turn shooting the plane over the ridge behind us! I lost sight of it and thought that’s the end of the Kinetic, but Ezza had just kept it in sight and a few minutes later with lots of cheering and backslapping we got 204 then 207. This is the first 60” in Australia to go over 200. After pushing it hard for a bit more and another near miss, Ezza admitted he was flaking so we walked back up to prepare for landing.
Landing requires an assistant spotter. From the launch area you have to walk up a path along the top of the ridge to the hanglider launch ramp, but the path is mostly under a canopy of trees, with 2 gaps in the canopy along the way. The spotter runs up to the first window, spots the plane and points at it. The flyer points the plane into wind and high, then runs up to the spotter. He watches the spotter who uses his free arm to indicate (if necessary) what correction to make to the sticks while you’re running to him. Then the same process is repeated twice more until you’re at the ramp. The wind at the ramp is so strong you can hardly talk. You have to swing yourself around a barrier gate, onto the platform and I found it best to kneel and fly, rather than stand.
Apparently many years ago the entire ridge was all grass. It would have been a DS paradise. But since the goats were removed from the headlands, the entire area has been overgrown by trees which are now level with the top of the platform, and between 8 and 12 ft above ground. The method of landing is to try to wash off speed, turn near the top of the ridge and pull flaps on, and try to hover the plane down into the treetops beside you. If you are a bit low the plane accelerates, even with flaps. If you’re a bit high you might cross the shear and fall between the tall trees either side of the path (happened to Ezza later), or if gets washed behind the ridge out of sight behind the trees. A good landing is really a well aimed crash and there’s always a chance of striking a strong branch, but we were lucky yesterday. But even if the plane’s only 10 metres from the platform, it’s a bit of a jungle-bash under the trees to get to the plane (if you can see it), and retrieving it thru the scrub is a challenge.
I next launched the Nemesis with full ballast. Prior to launch I removed all flap mixing so the flaps did not work as ailerons. Also removed all snap flap, and cut my low aileron rates back a little. That way we were able to tape the flaps. Even so, on the front the Nemesis carved around beautifully. I went through the same DS procedure and felt pretty good. Once I calmed down and tidied up the loops I got up to 150’s the best being 154. A big PB increase for me, up from 138. It was fun. The Nemesis is very, very quick, nimble and easy to fly and I feel more comfortable with it at speed than any other plane. It’s had heaps of major repairs which probably accounted for its quiet-ness. Matter of fact I’d just glassed up a wing rip just before I’d left home, then bogged and sanded it on the footpath outside the beach unit, and stuck Zagi tape over it for smoothness. Must have worked!
It was pretty spectacular with the plane screaming around and 2 guys with radar guns yelling speeds each lap. We had a lot of very interested spectators! I think when we told them it was mph not kph they just couldn’t believe it. Some cars wanted to stop and watch and others couldn’t get out of there fast enough. Some people just don’t seem to like a heavy carbon javelin heading straight for you at high speed.
Ezza was feeling edgy as the backside was pretty rough, and he was reluctant to get the Opus up. He hadn’t flown it for about 8 months due to the lack of good conditions. The last flight was when he had aerial problems, and since then he’d fiddled with the Opus and added ballast. He felt that the wind wasn’t record breaking stuff and he was just risking the plane, but his dad Maynard reckoned there was a chance. Days like this are too rare, so we urged him to have a go at his record. It was not easy – the Opus hadn’t been programmed on his Evo and he had to use his old Tx. Also he wasn’t happy with the small elevator throws, but he launched and up she went. She was perfectly trimmed and pulled hard out of big dives. He managed to get a flick under full elevator so reckoned the throws were OK, and we walked back to the DS spot.
That Opus really ripped. Once Ezza had bedded into the groove (turn just below the lighthouse …) almost every lap was over 200mph. I had trouble following it and got lots of missed readings which really crapped me off. There were half a dozen laps where the wind must have gusted and Ezza was absolutely nailing it, quite obviously the fastest we’d seen, and neither gun was getting it. Very frustrating. But he persevered and finally we got readings in the high 230’s and the highest 246.2 mph. He was obviously getting tired towards the end. I think we all felt that he’d probably been over 250 at some point, and that it might come again, but you have to bail out when your brain starts to fade.
The 2 radar guns (my Prospeed and Ezza’s Stalker Pro held by Maynard) were almost perfectly correlated. When we both got readings they were often identical or 1 – 2mph different. We were standing in different spots so you would expect some difference. I found that holding the gun at arms length helped get more readings, but man the arms started to hurt after a while! Later on I started to use the top of the gun like a sight, to really pinpoint it at the plane in the turn, and once I was doing that I hardly missed a reading. I think making a crude “gunsight” on the top of the gun would really help reduce missed readings
Sean then got the Carbon Bird out there and was not happy with its feel. Very squirrelly, and I suggested he land and put some lead in the nose. But he kept going, wrestling very hard with the Bird for hot lap after lap. He’s an amazingly smooth flyer and after a short while his thumbs got the Bird tamed and smoother and smoother. He makes it look easy. Just before midday he busted his PB of 184, crept up to 195, and consistently squeezed its neck until both guns got a 204 with several other laps over 200. A big PB for Sean, making him only the 3rd guy to go over 200 in Australia, and now we have 2 Aussie 60”ers over 200mph. Fantastic effort Sean and very well deserved.
I think Ezza had another go with the Opus then, but no better results, and soon landed.
Now for the “Hummer”. A big drawcard for Sean was to try to break Ezza’s 181mph Aussie DS foam record with his new Custom Home Brew DS foamie plank
(see
www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?p=11258785#post11258785)He maidened it last weekend in moderate rough wind at the Hump and hit 130 looking like it was barely out of first gear. We couldn’t wait to see what this thing would do. He was worried about the CG being a bit too far forward, but got himself in position and dived in. Man, it looked good and the guns were pointed - 130 mph on dive in, then 170, 179, and then BANG! Making a sound like kicking an empty cardboard box hard, the fuse and wing separated at bottom of the 4th lap. I never saw the fuse at all, and it was not found. But we had plenty of time to watch the wing flutter down between the houses and the lookout. Maynard got a good fix on it and I went hunting. I was very lucky to find it in an accessible spot, completely undamaged – it was a real jungle down there. Fortunately all the gear is in the wing, so it’s not such a huge job for Sean to make another fuse and tail, and as soon as the conditions are repeated this thing will take the Aussie record and may have a go at the WR as well! The fuse was EPP with a Reaper-style carbon boom. The tape on the fuse had been gooped to the wing tape, and the Goop had just ripped off the tape cleanly. The 300gm of lead fitted into the fuse probably didn’t help it survive the G’s.
Then I put the Wizard together, very nervous. But found one wing connector plug had come loose so we did a bit of bush engineering and got it fixed. Working beside the cars at the DS spot was uncomfortably hot and unpleasant – very dead still backside air in the midsummer sun. But up at the lookout you almost got blown away, and cold!
I again stopped all flap mixing and taped the flaps. Flying the Wiz frontside at Byron was awesome. But we were here for one thing … ! Due to its size the Wiz attracted more than its fair share of spectator attention, and it felt very fast, but it really wobbled around as it came up through the shear. I felt that I had to hold back because it was really getting ripped by the shear and a couple of times down the bottom it flicked a bit strangely. When it had been on the front I’d noted it was extremely neutral and wondered if I should put more lead in the nose. The Wiz has big control surfaces and I suspect the tail end of the fuse boom is a bit flexy. But I got 169mph (new PB for me) keeping the turns gentle. I’m sure it is capable of more, but this wasn’t the place to find out, so we bailed. I was very glad to do another good landing.
Ez gave the Kinetic another good thrashing but couldn’t match his earlier speed. Unfortunately he got caught in dead air at the top of the ridge on landing and plummeted nose first onto the platform. Maynard thought about catching it but may have ended up in hospital, evidenced by the deep punch mark made in the decking of the platform! It cracked the nose of the Kinetic, but it’s all easily repairable.
I was still feeling keen so put the Nemesis out again. I had that horrible feeling that it’s always the “just one more flight” that leads to trouble, but this one was good. The wind must have picked up a bit and it did consistent 150’s and lifted my PB for this plane to 163. I can’t say enough good things about the Nemesis; I love it. Andrew B – I know you don’t like dealing with Breta, but one day I’m gonna want another one of these!
All in all an absolutely great day. Thanks to Ezza and Sean for being the perfect mentors; I’m privileged to get to learn from you guys. And thanks to Maynard and his mate Havier for their extensive help in the unpleasant heat too.