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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SNHRCC and Southern NH Flying Eagles

I had an excellent visit with John Hayes and Clarence White, Prez and V-prez of SNHRCC, and got to tour their field. I had brought out the Pulse, but yeah, its always something: the left aileron servo had a seizure and failed, so I didn't get to fly. Bummer as the filed is about 24 miles away and took me 40 min to get to.

What an interesting field! Its literally on top of a landfill dome with a moat of sorts all the way around. It would be a lot of fun. The flyers there were all really wonderfully friendly, and quite skilled. It was really interesting to see a SAB Goblin 550 and 700 fly in expert hands. What an incredible machine, incredibly silent. In my short hour there I was amazed by the talent. Most cool was a solar powered electric power station being upgraded this weekend from 12V to 24V.

In my conversation with John he mentioned that there is a club in Merrimack, the Southern New Hampshire Flying Eagles. Somehow I missed them on the AMA website. Turns out they are about 20 min from my house, and have a Geotex runway. It doesn't seem to have electric power, so I may have to learn how to run a power inverter off the Lexus Hybrid...

I decided to join the Flying Eagles, since the drive has always been an issue (26 miles, 35 min to MCRCC, 40 min to the field in Hudson, NH).  I hate to do that as I really liked everyone I met at SNHRCC. I thought about dual citizenship, but really it all boils down to how easy it is to get from the couch to the field.

Arriving, Manchester-Bedford!

I got her last week, and my RC gear that I shipped arrived a couple of days after I did, just as planned. Everything arrived fine, including the PulseXT 25e I brought with me in the car. My full lab will arrive on saturday, with all of my old planes! My Biloxi planes won't get here until mid to late August with the rest of the family. Today I out the Pulse back together, looks great!

Hope to gain access to the SNHRCC Field soon!

 

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Moving... again. Last time!

I leave tomorrow for New Hampshire, though my family won't move until the end of the month. So I leave behind a broken 30cc Sbach, and my planes too big to put in my little car. I am taking my EFlite Pulse 25XTe, and of course ALL the LiPOs, since the mover's can't take those pesky things. I think I may take the dismantled Trex 600e as she will be an easy repair. It will be a couple of weeks before my aircraft in storage in NJ reach me in NH.

Well... see you on the other side!

Oh, and if you are looking for a home in the Biloxi area, mine's for sale!

Trash day...

It was no way to end my time flying out of MCRCC. I move next week so likely won't get to fly here again. It was a great day right up to the point that it wasn't. Attention to detail, my forte, was no where to be found and I paid grievously for my failings.

This pretzel is my beloved Align Trex 600e Pro. At least it was a spectacular death! I took off and made a turn, there was a pop and she flipped instantly front over back doing a complete 360 degree 3D style flip and slammed into the ground feet first. I hit hold as soon as I saw her flip knowing I did not do that and that 2+2 = impending crash. It was one of the fastest crashes I have ever seen! The damage is to the tail, torque tube assembly and the landing gear, blades. Otherwise she looks at first glance to have come through pretty well, though I don't know what the shafts are like. I don't plan on repairing her until after my move. Oh, almost forgot: the good news is in the flight before this one the tail mods worked perfectly and I had no problems with the tail blades striking!

Not sure what the pop we heard was... maybe the air cracking as the blades suddenly changed pitch? The servo linkages were all displaced by the crash, but the elevator ball link was disconnected from the elevator control. It was NOT stripped and screwed back on nicely. I failed to inspect the airframe prior to flight as I had just rebuilt her. I retrospect I recall during that rebuild noting the elevator link was almost completely unscrewed and meant to screw it back in but didn't. I think it worked loose, the swash dropped back and she flipped as if commanded full elevator. This loss is all from not screwing in a small but significant fitting... Pilot error.

The last pics before the crash of the 30cc Sbach. More inattention on my part. I always refuel before a flight. Sometimes I refuel and someone else flies so I have to wait. Or I just take a break. This is a bad habit: I should and will always refuel just before takeoff. So I was flying around like crazy and the motor, which has been running fine, quit. I realized as we did the post-mortem with a pretty dry tank that I must have failed to refuel her... I got another 7 minutes after the previous 10 min flight. I was low when the engine quit, but really still had space to get her safely down. I turned downwind, a little too close to the runway, turned out, then turned final, looking good. I brought her around to align with the runway and she suddenly just stopped flying, dropping flat onto the ground from about 10 feet up. And I mean straight down, wings level.  I suspect too much elevator as I came in with a plane that does't tolerate errors on dead stick...

Butcher's Bill: Broken wing tube, wings with minor punctures from the wheel pants but otherwise intact, landing gear are fine but broke clean off with their attachment. The bottom of the plane around the gear is gone, fairly easy fix. The motor pulled the firewall off shattering it; that's gonna take some time. The cowl was crumpled but intact, unrepairable. I just bought a new one to replace it, so no problem there. She basically pancaked from failure to maintain airspeed on deadstick approach: pilot error. Some minor fuse damage but the fuse is otherwise pretty fine. I just don't have the time or energy to fix it before my move...

Helluva day.