The flying monkeys got me...

Helis and fixed wing

AMA 957918
IRCHA 4345
AMA Intro Pilot Instructor

Pirate Kid Skeleton by RadDezigns.

Wednesday, August 27, 2014

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!

 

No comments :

Post a Comment