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...

PT-19 Flight Ready

With the arrival of the 4 Screws of the Apocalypse, I quickly finished off the PT-19 Cornell for E-flite. A special thanks to the folks at Horizon Hobby fo sending me the screws I found impossible to find locally.

I can't wait to fly her next time I hea out to Bob Miller Field!

Gyros

GilliganSC on Helifreak sent me an old school mechanical gyro. An interesting contrast to the new Assan Hobby King miniMEMS 250 gyro. The miniMEMS $10 gyro purports to contain $150 MEMS micro electronic gyro technology. I bought a couple and hope they work as well as users are saying they are. Hobby King cannot keep them in stock they are so popular.

The case says its a Quest Gyro Systems gyro.

Inside I found a solid brass wheel on one side, and what looks like a wheel on the other covered in metal. Other mechanical stabilization gyros I have seen have a pair of brass wheels, so I wonder if there is a wheel under the cover. The wheel and covered-wheel are on a pivot that can turn only a few degrees each way.

Assan Hobby King miniMEMS 250 gyro kit.

The miniMEMS on my CopterX 250. Foam tape, steel plate, foam tape, Zeal gel tape. This should solve my tail wag! It looks better than it, well, looks....

I will let you know how theses things work out. I have two, another on the way. One on my 250, another  is going on my EXI 450, and another on my Frankenheli 450.

Horizon Hobby Rocks!

Worked wiith Horizon Hobby Customer Service to get 4 screws for the cowl, and they decided to send the 4 screws with a complete new cowl! Now thats taking care of the customer!

Downtime...

Got an itch I can't scratch, need to fly something... Between work and getting to all the honey-do's, I haven't even been able to tinker.

Hate it when life gets in the way of life...

Flying the Syma in Meridian

Brought my Syma S107 up to Meridian with me to fly in the company apartment. Almost brought up my ERazor but didn't want to drag up all my equipment. I had forgotten how much fun this little 3 channel is to fly. Was hard to try to fly and capture a pic at the same time.