What a Weekend!

Sorry, still no pictures from the Sunday flying session at the field. There were at least thirty control line planes there. However, I just remembered my old digital camera at the last minute. And the battery was needing a charge. and the charge cord was missing. So -no camera-no pictures. But the charge cord was found during the day. And the camera battery was charged last night. So next week I should be able to get some field pictures.
This Sunday we had some neat stuff flying. A 1/2-A gyrocopter successfully took off, flew out all of it's fuel in the tank and then crash landed. A 1/2-A p-38 twin engine warbird flew. And a whole mess of sport and throttle control planes flew. We had a blast!
But-how about this. The Chambersburg Modelairs held a flea market at the Scotland, Pennsylvania community center on Saturday morning. I went to the flea market hoping there would be some C/L stuff there. And I was able to buy an old beat up Ringmaster (S1 kit version) for $5.00 Such a deal. Now all I have to do is restore it.
Also found about 15 old wide blade wooden props in usable sizes that were cheap.
And wonder of wonders, a guy had an OS LA25-S that was brand new. And he sold it to me on the cheap. I think I like R/C flea markets.
On April 30 the Frederick Model Airplane Club is having a flea market. I'll be there.

ARC?-What a weekend! 

Control Line Collage-Why Not? 

Flying Session-Last Sunday

The weather last Sunday in MD was 70 degrees and sunny with light winds. Needless to say we had a good turnout at the flying field.
Chuck flew his Twister disguised as an Agcat and powered by a Super Tigre 51 C/L. It is one of the new Chinese made ones. And it performs beautifully. The engine is so powerful it is almost hard to hold down the plane.
A couple of guys brought 1/2-A gyrocopters. We found out they are too small to be flown near grass. A large completely paved area is necessary.
There were also 3 or 4 1/2-A board wings. They were mostly flown successfully. It seems like a bit of 1/2-A fever is sweeping our club.
Probably at least 12 other .15 to .40 sized sport planes were flown. No major mishaps. Just a lot of fun.
My Acro is fully repaired now and put in three good flights on Sunday.
My Streak ARF is also running fine now after a little fuel system maintenance. It put in three good flights on Sunday. No worries.
One of these weekends I am going to have to take a camera out to the field so I can publish some pictures. Pictures are bound to be more interesting than this.

Spring Flying - Clowniac

Fortunately I had the Clowniac with me last Wednesday. So I still had something to fly after the Streak crapped out. The Clowniac seemed pretty reasonable on the first flight except that I started to get the feeling that it was a little too tail heavy.
So on the second flight I was thinking about wheather I should remove a little tail weight. But I was still doing some stunting. And the wind was picking up and getting a little weird. All of a sudden I tried an inside loop. Just as the nose turned up, a shear wind blew the plane right into the circle at me. Slack lines-no control-then the Clowniac began finishing the loop. I regained a little bit of line tension and gave it up just before it hit the ground. I had never seen a plane caught by the wind that way.
But I was lucky. The plane hit the ground on it's landing gear. The outside leg was buried about 4 or 5 inches into the ground. And it was bent out and up at about a 20 degree angle. Otherwise nothing was broken-not even the prop!
So all I had to do was straighten out the gear with my hands as best I could and keep on flying. I ended up getting three more flights on the Clowniac.
And the winds kept getting worse. As we continued flying a couple of us noticed a several times that at a certain part of the circle our outside wing panels were being lifted by certain shear winds at about the same place I tried the loop and crashed. Needless to say, we did not try any more loops there.
But on my last flight the winds were so bad, I had probably about six laps where I wasn't sure I could even keep the plane airborne. Where do these weird Spring winds come from anyway?
After I got home, I did remove a half ounce of tail weight from the Clowniac.
And the funny part is-I can't wait to go flying again.

Spring Flying - ARF Streak

Last Wednesday a bunch of us went flying at the club field. The weather was sunny and in the 80's. And early in the afternoon there wasn't much wind.
Remember the ARF Streak? Well, my first flight of the day was with the ARF Streak. It performed well for about a third of a tank, and then the engine began sagging. And then it quit prematurely. One of the guys suggested the needle valve assembly had some dirt in it. But I just wanted to try again. So I restarted and tried to fly with the needle valve opened up a lot compared to the first flight. But the engine just sagged and quit.
So that was it for the Streak.
Since then, I have flushed out the tank with denatured alcohol. And removed the NVA and blown it out and reinstalled it. It did seem that there was some dirt on the needle when I took it out of the spraybar, but otherwise I could not see anything blocking anything.
I also added an inline fuel filter to the fuel line between the tank and the engine.
Hopefully the engine (OS LA25) will run O.K. the next time I try to fly it. Where do these gremlins come from anyway?

Circulator-Back in One Piece 

Acro Repairs Under Way 

Circulator Rules!

Remember the Circulator? I took it out to the flying field also last Wednesday. Good thing too, because after the Acro crashed I still had something to fly. The first flight with the Circulator was O.K. but I was a little disappointed. So I decided to take the Master Airscrew 9x6 prop off the engine and try another prop. I ended up trying an APC 9.5x4.5 that I found in my spare prop box. What a fantastic improvement! The little red engine (Irvine 25) came alive with the new prop. I got in three more flights on the Circulator after that. A total of five flights on the Circulator. And four of them were great engine runs with the new prop. What a blast! The Circulator did inside and outside loops, lazy eights, vertical eights, overhead eights, wingovers, reverse wingovers, and flew inverted. And plenty of all of that. And we dealt with plenty of weird wind conditions also.
Long live the Circulator!

Acro Busted!

Can you believe it? Last Wednesday was a great day here in Maryland, weather-wise. So a bunch of us went to the flying field. I flew the Acro for the first flight of the day. Started with a lot of confidence. The flight went pretty well. Except I did feel that I had a little too much tail weight. The engine ran out of fuel while the plane was high-about a 45 degree angle above level. I did not sense any particular difficulty with that. I was thinking about taking off some tail weight after landing. The plane slowed down a lot. It still had a lot of altitude. I started to dive a little to pick up some speed. And then a down draft caught the Acro and slammed it right down to the ground really hard and really fast. Caught me completely by surprise. The Acro was on the ground before I could react. Wicked downdraft! And of course there was a loud CRACK! And the fuselage broke in two pieces right behind the wing.
So I took some tail weight off the Acro and put the pieces in the bed of the pickup.
Now the Acro is under repair. I epoxied the pieces back together. And I am layering Carbon fiber strips and carbon fiber veil over the joint and far beyond the joint on either side. A little repainting and she should look O.K. Hopefully the repairs will be able to survive a lot of rough landings. But I would still like to be spared the shear winds and downdrafts that are so common at our field.
One of the other guys in the club also crashed while pulling out of an outside loop inverted. His plane ran into a downdraft at just the wrong time and hit the ground.