The New Bat Cave Flying Lab

I guess I can call the new rc flight lab, my Bat Cave, done!

 

The hallway in the basement, leading into the Batcave. The C-47 graces the wall, but I don't have an outlet to put the under lighting.

 

As you enter, the TV bay.

 

And to the right, my desk and The Lab.

 

 

 

Battery charging station. The gas can will be in the garage, but right now it's empty since my 30cc was attached to my crashed Sbach....

 

 

I usually leave the lights down, but they turn up nicely. Same spot lighting over the benches, planes on all the walls, some on the floor, the Sopwith and A-10 are still deconstructed. It's naturally cool, and the dehumidifier works wonders, straight easy access to the garage. Best cave ever! I wanted one of the couches, but Maria knew that she wouldn't ever see me expect to eat and pee...

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Flying Joppa Hill

A beautiful day for flying! Headed out to the Joppa Hill fields at around 11:30 this morning to find Joe and Chip flying. They had come out around 8:30!

 

Joe flying his Wildcat. I need to get pics of his scratch built foam planes, especially this Wildcat and his C-130. These are really talent filled builds! Can't believe I failed to get a pic.

My Eflite Ultimate and my Pulse in the foreground. I flew the Ultimate for the first time in over two years, and she flew amazingly well making me look good! Always a fun one this one. She is so light and well powered she can do almost anything. I had put some weights in her tail, which I need to remove, back when I was trying to get her to hover (she never will), but she still flew well. I put several packs through her and the Pulse in the near perfect conditions.

 

The highlight was getting to watch Joe fly his FPV drone! What kinda skills does this take, eh? From the science to the application to the flying.

 

Chip and Joe working on Joe's FPV.

 

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Flying Local

I've joined two flying clubs here in New Hampshire, Southern NH RC club in Hudson, NH, and the Merrimack Flying Eagles. I visited the Flying Eagles field as a guest of John Hayes, a spectacular representative for the club, and met Clarence White, also a wonderful ambassador. I look forward to flying my larger planes there, including getting a gasser up again soon. I had planned to fly that day but had a preflight inspection failure with what seemed to be a bad servo on the PulseXT 25e (but on diagnostics turned out to be a bad Spektrum AR600). Jist being I have yet to fly at either field.

I live down the road from a nice wide set of unencumbered soccer fields in Bedford, less than a mile from my house. I just had to fly there. I had the Alpha Sport 450 and the Pulse up, so took them for a spin today.

 

 

I don't know the numbers, but it was really gusty and the wind direction was variable. Tomorrow will have sustained high winds with gusts to 22mph, I think much like today. The 450 flew okay for 3 batteries, but it was all bob and weave, and landings were at rather high speeds for stability. I then decided to throw caution to the wind, often the harbinger of regret, and took the Pulse up. She got thrown around quite a bit and after a couple of minutes of hard work, I decided to bring her in, uneventfully. I didn't feel like pushing my luck and called it a day.

But the real news is a rather nice gent named Joe L, who stopped by during my first flight seeing my Alpha aloft. He's a pilot too, and we struck up a conversation. He noted that several guys fly on these fields and that they just started dabbling in FPV. He shared a remarkable pic of a scratch built foam C-130 I can't wait to see in person. They get together sometimes on purpose and fly together, or can be found out there randomly. Sadly none of them fly helis... Yet.

Good day. Broke my dry stretch, got my flying fingers back under challenging conditions, brought all my babies home, and found there's a secret cadre of pilots nearby!

 

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