Well, Mark's Moth got maidened today - but he had to work very hard indeed to make it happen:
The dramas started yesterday for Mark when he couldn't get his new (to him) 9Xv2 programmed to drive the Moth in the necessary fashion. So he calls Sean and drives for 2 1/2 hours to get to Bald Knob and he & Sean get the radio sorted, but there's really no wind for a maiden so Mark has to be content with a quick test glide.
Then he and I get together today as organised last week to give the Moth its proper maiden, except no-one ordered any wind! It was dead calm at my place at 10am so I called Mark and he decided he was keen enough to drive all the way to Mt Mee to give it a shot, so off we went.
When we arrived (down the VERY slippery road - glad of Mark's 4wd ute!) there was barely enough wind to fly my Alula, plus occasional showers. Anyway, the wind picked up a little and Mark was brave enough to ready the Moth while I flew the Alula to mark the areas of lift. Then I hear the call from behind me 'plane on fire'. I thought he was telling me he was keen to go so I called out 'do you want me to throw it?' and the reply came back 'No, it's really on fire!!!'.
Oh heck!
Landed the Alula asap and went to see Mark pulling the electrics out of the fuselage, accompanied by plenty of smoke and melted wiring. WTF? Looks like there was a short across the exposed terminals of the lost model alarm that caused the smoke to escape as soon as Mark turned the power on.
Bugger!
Would you believe Mark had elected to detour this morning and pick up 2 new battery packs he'd ordered for future planes, plus he had a spare lost model alarm. Amazing. So he set about pulling out the damaged battery and electrics, accompanied by more smoke as the damaged battery wires continued to intermittently short. In the meantime I put a new Eneloop pack on charge so as to be sure it had plenty of capacity, even though we know Eneloops are shipped charged up.
So Mark gets the messy bits out of the Moth fuse, puts in the new pack and LMA, tests his receiver along the way and it's all good except the LMA won't stop alarming. What's going on? The servos are moving correctly and all looks good but the blasted alarm won't shut up. So I suggest that thanks to my quick charge the pack is at a high voltage and the LMA thinks it's a 5 cell pack and is detecting low voltage rather than seeing a high voltage 4 cell pack. Sure enough, changing to pack 3 has everything performing as it should.
Let me ask you though, how often have you taken 2 spare battery packs along to a new plane maiden?
Anyway, by this time the wind has died away and Mark wisely decides to move to Bald Knob because Sean is there and he says strong winds are expected, and besides - he has a bungee!
So we pack up and relocate to Bald Knob via a visit to Jeff Irvin's magical shed where he shows us a tiny fraction of the neat toys and moulds to build them that he has on the go.
On the way to Bald Knob we get a call from Sean who tells us not to bother coming, there's no wind! In answer to our question 'where would you go to maiden a new plane today?', his answer was 'Home!'.
In any event we pressed on to find him happily flying his Skua in very light winds, having bungee launched to a good height. So Mark pulls out the Moth, powers it up and again the LMA won't shut up, except this time it's due to interference. You've just gotta love Bald Knob! After a fair bit of mucking around with aerials and receivers (He had a spare Rx as well!) it's not looking good but we get a range check of perhaps 30m so given that there's really low cloud and no visibility he can't fly the plane far away anyway so we go for it in true maiden flight fashion!
I give the Moth a test throw, followed by a good strong toss over the edge to commit to the very light breeze. Up goes the Moth, down comes the Moth, over the edge and out of sight of Mark (but not me) goes the Moth and Mark & Sean start walking toward the expected crash site to get the plane when I shout 'DOWN' - meaning to put in full down elevator because the Moth is still flying and if it isn't landed right now it's going straight for a HUGE tree which we'll never get it out of!
Mark of course doesn't have a clue what I'm on about but my shout does get him looking at me in time to see the Moth sail serenely just over the top of said tree and out over the never never. He starts flying the plane again but it's all over the place and the LMA starts beeping again to alert us to loss of signal. I'm yelling 'Bring it back!', Mark's yelling 'I'm trying!' so I shut up and start praying and Mark gets enough control to land with a relatively short walk, during which both our heart-rates come down to something approaching normal. Sean in his wisdom had said he thought the range check wasn't good enough and he was proven well and truly right, as he so often is.
So by now it's well into mid afternoon and I'm as determined as Mark that he should get this plane maidened. Fortunately I have a Bald Knob proven 8 channel Schulze receiver in my Alula which is easy to get to and Mark has a portable soldering iron to do the aerial and a synth Tx so he can work on my freq.
OK guys, put your hand up if you carry those with you on a maiden! Amazingly in 5 minutes he's ready for another go.
I've never seen anyone overcome so many challenges in 1 day at the field to get a successful maiden, but that's what Mark did.
In the poor light and the thick cloud which was enveloping us as we stood on top of the hill, I gave the Moth a good throw and it flew like the thoroughbred it is, just beautiful - and especially amazing for a fast plank in such light conditions. Sensational! And Mark did a great job flying his first plank in appalling visibility and desperately poor lift. His one saving grace was the AMAZING colour scheme he's done on the Moth. I can tell you from personal experience that you really can see flouro red through cloud!
After a few short but satisfying flights Mark had to call it a day as the cloud was getting even thicker and the light even poorer. I have to say my hat's off to him, he did a great job just to stop from throwing either the Moth, his Tx or me over the side!
I'm also seriously impressed with what I saw of the Moth today and keen to get mine into the sky too!
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Congrats Mark!
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). Well done. You sure came prepared. Hope you get better conditions next time.