Another pretty darn good flying day!

Today was meeting day at MCRCC. It was windy, so I didn't head out to the field until around noon. I didn't get to fly my Cubby or my Alpha, but I did get to corkscrew my EXI 450 into the ground.

I had set her up with the new miniMEMS gyro and converted her to a tail boom servo. The latter because the original fuselage servo tray cracked off. The EXI require complete removal of the tail box from the rear of the fuselage to put the tail boom servo brackets on. A lot of work but easy enough. The gyro seemed to be set up fine, but I made a mistake I made once before... I lifted off the first time and the heli turned slowly.  I set it back down. I made the mistake of thinking it was that the gyro was reversed. I reversed the gyro, strike one. I then noticed that the blue light did not illuminate on the gyro after having reversed it. I figured it needed to be rebound, mistake number two.  Rebinding it did not solve the problem, but I decided to fly it anyway, strike three. It lifted off and twisted high and violently corkscrewed into the ground. Over in 2 seconds.

On inital inspection the tally is: broken main blade, bent flybar (almost certainly bent main rotor shaft and feathering shaft comes with that), two stripped metal gear servos, bent tail tube, bent tail rotor shaft, broken tail blade, sheared off tail guard. I have the parts, but its a good week's worth of work.

Jerry and Bob setting up one of the MCRCC trainers for me.

Jerry was presented with the first AMA District ACE award for  excellence in contributions to our hobby today! Congratulations, Jerry! As one of your students, I am thrilled for your recognition by the AMA!

But here's the part that made it all better! It was too windy for my planes, so Jerry offered to buddy box me on one of the club's 40 class nitro trainers. We did three hops, and it went pretty well!  But the winds wreaked havoc and on the third landing attempt of our final hop a wind shear dropped it in the last tree at the approach end of the runway. It came to rest on the ground completely unharmed.

I continue to be really glad and excited to have joined this flying club! I enjoy the people and the flying field more than I imagined I would.

I Can Fly! A totally awesome day!

This morning I took the rebuilt Cubby and my ERazor 450 out to the church field. I came with both a confidence I can fly and a strong motivation to just get on with it. I was a little worried about how the Cubby would fly, being a bit bent, but it flew great. Made me a little nervous at first that it wasn't responding well to the inputs, but I think I was under controlling a little bit when I felt that was happening. I really enjoyed flying today, and I brought back both aircraft relatively intact! I did run into another Ent, but this time it was my fault as I lost sight of the fact it was closer than it appeared.

The importance of these videos is not in my skill or the videography, neither of which are very good, but in that I managed to do it at all! (I wasn't able to adjust the contrast, so things are a bit washed out).

Flying awesome, until I run into an Ent...but we escape this time!

While waiting for the Cubby repairs to dry I took the ERazor 450 up.

Finally a good takeoff, flight and fair landing!

An incredible, awesomely rewarding day!

Acute Power Loss

The video tells the story. Still not quite sure what happened... Out of frame a bit as I was using the keychain hatcam.

Cubby Rebuilt

You can read the story of loss and recovery of the Cubby here, but here's the rest of the story!

The wing took major damage. The huge chunk bashed in on the right leading edge I filled with piece of carved closed cell foam which I glued into place, covered with package tape, and then Ultracoted to cover and strengthen.

The wing was almost divided in half. I put a 6.5 in length of 1/4 inch dowel in the middle as a spar, then glued the halves together, and held them tight with package tape. I then Ultracoted the area for more strength and to improve the look.

The underside with the package tape.

Tried to save the battery. One cell was discharged to around 2V, the other 2 were below 2. I recovered 2 of the cells, but the third one would not take a charge, so I had to recycle the battery. I used my Skycharger out on the deck with the battery in a flowerpot in case it caught fire. Never seen a LiPo fire? Google it... quite impressive. 

And here's what she looked like in the driveway this afternoon! Took her to MCRCC Field, but it was too windy to fly... Maybe Friday!

The red stuff is th Ultracote plastic. Its the covering used when building or repairing balsa/plywood planes, goes nicely on foamies too.

Cubby back on the wall!

Recovered the Cubby!

My friend Patrick Rochon and I gathered up his 40 ft ladder and headed out to rescue the Cubby from the Ent that had gathered her up.(Here's the story on how I lost her.)

We threw the 40ft ladder in the back of Patrick's Pick-em' up truck. This being Mississippi I required neither a seatbelt, nor a helmet, but I failed to have drunk the requisite 6-pack of Bud Light prior to this adventure.

My reflection as I sat in back serving as ballast for the unmarked ladder. 

At least I had my Boston FD Ladder 15 T-shirt on!

Patrick holding the carcass. We tried shaking the tree, but were unable to accomplish much. He brought up just getting a chain saw, but I reminded him that this being Mississippi and the tree being a Magnolia, someone would be going to jail... We trundled in the ladder through the thorny brush, and I climbed up 20ft with his manliness holding the ladder in the soft ground against a wavering tree. I used a 25ft pool brush, but still couldn't reach it from 20 ft up. The tree thinned out too much to extend the ladder, so I just started shaking the tree from 20ft up and found I had pretty good purchase from up there. I had that tree moving about 2-3 ft, and the ladder sliding all around. I was determined to get that plane out of that tree! About this time I started thinking I should have had that 6-pack, because it would be hard to explain why I fell 20 ft into the woods to rescue what some would consider a toy, and beer explains a lot of things... I managed to free the plane and it fell another 10 feet where I was able to poke it with the extended brush, eventually coaxing it out of the Magnolia. This must happen a lot in this trailer park, as no one so much as looked out a window at two strangers backing into a vacant trailer pad and climbing through the woods with a ladder...

But we succeeded! She is badly damaged, but she is no longer alone in a tree... Just in time as tomorrow will be storming!

Started on that 6-pack... Broken wing, missing right wheel and wing struts. I have replacements!

All the electronics look good.

The gyro... I don't think it was the gyro that caused the problem. I think the receiver went rogue and the gyro kept the wings level right up into the trees. But I am taking it out anyway...

Curiously, the prop-saver with two O-rings kept the prop smack dab in the middle of the motor.

So, this week I will be refurbishing my Cubby. I have already ordered a new one, so I will have two. This one will be my banger, and I am glad to have her. It reduces the fear of wrecking a "nice" plane. I know she can take a beating and keep on going! I will buttress up the wing and fix that leading edge, and be up again by the end of the week!

Special thanks to Patrick for helping me out!

Pine Belt RC Association Fly-In 2011

I decided to head up to the PRBCA Fly-In up near Purvis off Purvis Oloh Road. This place was truly out in the boonies. I didn't fly, but enjoyed watching some really cool aircraft and some very talented pilots. Remember you can click on the pics to enlarge them!

View down the pit alley at PRBCA field.

An actual turbine powered jet. Way cool... very cool sound, smell (just like Jet-A) and this baby hustled.

The ubiquitous Cubby's.

Foamie warplanes.

Greg Whittier's (Brookhaven RC Club) ginormous scratch built PC-6 Pilatus Porter.

A Katana. Beautiful plane, skilled driver (they guy in blue).

Everyone loves a Stearman!

Greg Whittier (flying a Telemaster rigged as a jump plane) with Frank Moak, pilot of the Skydiver slung underneath the Telemaster, the coolest RC gadget I have ever seen! They are from the Brookhaven RC Club.

The Telemaster with the Skydiver underneath on takeoff.

Skydiver after the free-fall with open chute. Once the Telemaster got to altitude a flick of the switch released him from the a/c and he free falls until Frank releases the chute.

His arms move, controlling the chute! This dude is totally scale! You can see the drag chute on top. A guy in Belgium makes the parachutes. This is a fully controlled parachute. Frank can land him with amazing precision. You can see him here about to make a right turn; see how his right arm has dropped and the chute is folding the right leading edge. His arms drop and he flares the chute just before a soft touchdown. You darn near expect him to run out the landing and gather up his own chute!

Frank Moak with his Skydiver. Frank builds these from scratch. Greg and he developed this unique flight system.  I hope they will come out to our Fly-in!

Close up of the Skydiver. Frank had 3 of these and it took him a couple of minutes to fold the chute and pack it properly in the very real pack. Like the model aircraft, this model Skydiver is a precise copy of the real thing in miniature.

Some very large planes flying 3D, here in a hover. Goes to show even plankers want to fly helis!

For scale, these planes are the same size as the one below.

The MCRCC contingent. Paul Verger's Extra 300.

Paul getting his Extra 300 ready to start. Unfortunately an electrical problem grounded him. I was looking forward to watching him fly; he has competed in Pattern and aerobatics and I imagine it would have been something else to see him fly! 

It was a long drive up, a couple of hours. I paid my flying fee, but opted not to fly as I would have wanted a buddy box with an instructor and this wasn't really the place to do that. Had a nice lunch, won a kids sized T-shirt and a bunch of free Buffalo Wild Wings! Jerry Gollott won a RTF Micro flyer. No helis flying though, not by design. Someone had the new Quadcopter there. Tomorrow I am heading out to MCRCC and will spend as much time flying as I possibly can! I enjoyed meeting all the MCRCC guys and sitting with them. A good bunch of people who clearly love the hobby! 

Rest in peace, Little Cubby... :-(

Exceed J3 Cubby, 4 ch

2/5/11 - 4/1/11

Today I lost my beloved Cubby.

Has it really only been 2 months since I first built my little Cubby? Wow... so much has happened in those two months, I still can't believe thats all the time that has passed since I built her.

So the gyro stabilization idea was not so good an idea in my hands... This morning Luke and I thought we'd take advantage of the relatively calm weather and beautiful morning to fly the Cubby with the new gyro stabilization mod and the new prop protector. I had a little problem getting the prop to stay behind the protector, but a second O-ring solved that problem. The controls worked fine in low dual rate, and were free and clear. I throttled up and she took off into the wind. The problems started immediately. It seems when the rudder turned and tried to roll the plane a little, in addition to my aileron inputs, the gyro pushed her back upright. She started to oscillate in roll, and was uncontrollable. I tried high rates and it only worsened the problem. I could not turn her. I should have crashed her, but I got fixated on not spinning her to the ground. I started to realize she wasn't responding well to elevator either, and being a high wing load plane she wanted speed to stay aloft. I realized she was flying away from me out of control. By the time I understood how bad things were she was entering the trailer park and I could not crash her... I had my hands off the controls and she continued to oscillate wildly in roll, perfectly trimmed in pitch, as we watched her fly high into the trees behind the row of trailers. She tumbled a few branches down, breaking apart some, and then she was stuck. She wasn't coming down. I lost her.

A grounds keeper at the church drove over I think to ask us what we were doing there... before he could ask I told him we lost a plane in the trees and were going to try to find her. He didn't understand, but he could see the sadness with which I spoke and chose to simply wish us well and drove off.

Luke and I went to the base of the tree a couple of hundred yards away. I can barely see her up there. A wing strut had made it to the ground at the base of the tree. Lukey says he could see her, but I don't think so, she was buried deep and I could barely see her myself through the thick foliage. I made my way through the dense thorny poison ivy ridden brush (tore open my burn wound on my leg). The tree wasn't more than 10 feet back from the tree line, but it was tall and densely leafed. It took me several minutes to get back there. I still could not see her well from right underneath, catching just glimpses of her bright yellow airframe. I shook the tree to see what would happen, and it mocked me.There was no rescuing her, and I suspect she will be up there for a very long time.

If you look carefully you can see her in the tree...

With her we lost some friends...

A new motor, a new Gen Ace 1000 mAh 3S battery, a new Hobby King Orange Receiver and satellite, the new Hobbywing 20A ESC, the GY192 gyro (damn thing), and of course, Cubby with her servos...

May she rest in peace, high in the branches of that nondescript tree behind the nondescript trailer in a nondescript trailer park, behind the field behind the Pentecostal church off Popps Ferry Road in Biloxi.

Good bye friend... I miss you already.

PS: The more I think about it, I have a suspicion there was something amiss with the reciever. Though I had bound it before, it was not bound when I started her up and I had to rebind before the flight...