 |
| Ed Vincent's F4U Corsair during the taxi testing today. |
Upon arriving I was able to be in attendance to witness Jim Aultmans successful first solo RC flight and several other flights he flew later that day too.
Ken Conway was there also preparing his SIG Kadet Senior RC plane to start his buddy box training with Ed Vincent as his very well qualified instructor, and they were going over his plane and equipment readying it for flight on the buddy box system.
Soon afterwards Terry Davis showed up with his Hangar 9 Pulse 60 plane and put on his usual fantastic and fast performance with it until he had some suspect glitching going on while flying, so he decided to bring it right in for a nice landing even though he had killed the engine and dead sticked it in.
I decided I needed to get busy and get something put together to fly so out came the SIG 4 Star 60 and I got in something like 3 flights or so on it today also. I did some stall turns and vertical stalls with it along with several rolls and loops of different kinds, all in the name of learning this planes flight tendencies. It performed very nicely for me and gave me a lot of confidence in how well it was running as well as flying too.
Ken and Ed got in numerous flights on the buddy box system together today also and it appeared to me while observing the flying they did that Ken was doing very smooth and good with his first flights on his plane today. They stayed up so long on one flight that Ed ended up doing a dead stick landing with the plane when it ran out of fuel. Come to find out upon further discovery that Ken's timer in his coat pocket somehow got turned off during the flight and did not alert them of how long they had been up flying. No damages or concerns at all for the dead stick landing for Ed to accomplish due to his great skill and experience, and the great flying tendencies of that SIG trainer plane too.
Marlowe Cassetti showed up with a brand new "Dras-Stick" 40 or 60 sized nitro plane to maiden today and after the usual pre flight checks and range checks and fueling he took off with it on its maiden flight. It turned out to be horribly out of trim and Marlowe struggled with it the entire short time it was flying trying to get it trimmed out, but had to ditch it out in the field. A small amount of damage was suffered to the upper wing mounting block area, but it appears to be a very easy repair that he is going to do. That plane is very pretty and looks to be a well designed plane too. Marlowe then got out his small electric Ultra-Stick and attempted to fly it too, but for some reason it went down also. I didn't find out what the situation was for that one however, but by all appearances it did not appear to be damaged either.
Ed Vincent got in quite a bit of "taxi-testing" attempts on his F4U Corsair war bird and it proved to be a very difficult plane to handle on the ground, as is typical of lots of warbirds. We also discovered that the set screw had backed out on his tail wheel and he did not have full travel throws on it, which added to the difficult ground handling problems that Ed was experiencing with this plane today. That is the purpose of the "taxi-testing" portion that he did today to uncover any possible problems prior to flying this plane for it's maiden flight. It seems that the repairs and adjustments will be very minor things to attend to on Ed's warbird and I look forward to seeing it flying a lot in the very near future too. Ed also flew the SIG Kadet Seniorita that he purchased at the club's swap meet recently.
I have a few pictures of Ken getting his SIG Kadet Senior ready for the buddy box flying that he and Ed accomplished today and will post them here now, as well as some pictures of Ed Vincent's Corsair warbird taxiing around learning about this plane too.
Enjoy the pictures as much as I enjoyed taking them and being at the field with some very good pilots and friends today.
 |
| Ken and Ed. |
 |
| Getting started. |
 |
Tweaking and tuning the SIG Kadet Senior.    |
I have to confess this wasn't a good flying day for me.
ReplyDeleteThe maiden flight, my "Drastick" was a real hand full that caused me to fly all over the place. It was fast and every time I attempted to trim the controls (mostly elevator & some ailerons) it would dive and streak off in another direction. I found it got away from me and got over the Airport. Not good! I finally gave up and attempted to land it just off to the east on the ridge just past the ravine. As Mark mentioned the plane was lightly damaged.
So I then got out my recently repaired E-Mini Stick (another maiden flight) and had similar problems, but I brought it in at the end of our runway with some minor damage.
LESSON LEARNED - On next maiden flights, I will ask someone to stand by me and operate the trim adjustments while I keep it within the confines of our flying field. I will also do this when I am the sole flyer and have the airspace to myself.