July 24 was another flying day. Sunny and hot and with a bit of a cross-wind. I shot a lot of video, so I may post other clips from this day, especially on-board views. But here's a segment I put together for the Life in a Day film (by Kevin Macdonald):



It's what I do.
- posted by Bill @ 11:21 AM 0 comments

 
Today I flew at the club on the Air Force base again, and this time I attached a small video camera to my plane. The video is pretty crappy due to vibration issues and conversion to Flash, but it was my first venture into airborne video.



The mounting method was crude, but functional, but it was good because it was simple and allowed me to try it in different locations and orientations, which enabled me to identify where the high and low vibration areas were on the airframe, and to become aware of the vibration problem in the first place. I will no doubt devise a vibration dampener mount for it to alleviate the problem for future flights. Or, I'll just put it on the 4-stroke diesel. :)

I have uploaded three clips to my YouTube channel, as seen below.

Things didn't go so well in the first clip:



But all other flights were without incident. There was no damage, by the way.



I like the third clip the best, because I did a lot of touch and go's, so the engine was not so wound up all the time, giving (marginally) better pictures.



It was hot out there! Three hours was long enough. But the plane came home safely, and now I have a whole gallon of that nasty nitro fuel, so I've got some serious flight time ahead of me. I hope!
- posted by Bill @ 4:37 PM 0 comments

 
Questor returns!
- posted by Bill @ 1:45 AM 0 comments

 
Questor Around the Corner

I am thinking about reviving the Questor project. I want to fly it next year. I'll post alerts here if and when any activity emerges on the project. It has been on the shelf for far too long.
- posted by Bill @ 9:50 PM 0 comments

 
Today was my second day of flying in my venture to return to the hobby. This time, it was out to Beale Air Force Base, where they have a nice field loaded with nothing but sky.

The following three photos pan from left to right along the flight line. The airplane in the photos is not mine, and the fact that it is in all three pictures is purely accidental, as I we merely trying to capture the site.





It was a sunny, cloudless day...but it was windy. The forecast said 5MPH winds gusting to 10MPH, but it was quite a bit stronger than that at times. And, it was choppy - very choppy. Gusts would come unexpectedly, and there was nothing steady about the wind - not even its direction. The windsock was blowing straight horizontal at times, an I believe it was a 20MPH windsock.

When I arrived at the field, the wind was blowing pretty much straight down the runway. But shortly afterward, it shifted a bit, cutting across the runway at about 45 degrees - sometimes more.

If you want to hear a group of guys get together and complain, get a group of R/C pilots out on the field on a windy day. Wah, wah, wah! Despite the complaints, some of them flew, anyway. Most of them, actually. Surprisingly, I didn't see a single serious mishap today, whereas the grassy knoll flying excursion a couple days ago, in the evening with absolutely no breeze to speak of, at least four planes went down in pieces.

I flew today without a single complaint about the wind. I like flying in the wind. And what better way to get my thumbs back? I flew several times during the day, until my transmitter batteries began to dip, and I landed a couple of times in the weeds (once because a gust of wind blew me off of my approach pattern just before touchdown, and once because I just wanted to get the plane down with all the commotion going on - there were too many planes in the air, and I don't like to fly with a lot of other planes in the air.

But I did a couple of touch-and-go's, and got in a pretty smooth landing or two. I'm still a little rusty, so don't have my polish back (I'm no longer one with my airplane...but I will be one day soon). But, once again, my airplane returned home in one piece, no worse for wear, and ready to go again. Another successful day of flying.



I think the crowning moment of the day was when, at one point, some of the guys were hanging around my table, and one of them uttered the memorable phrase of the day: "you have no ailerons!"

Here I am, the new guy at the field, who hasn't really flown in four years, showing up at a flying club with an old beater airplane built in 1983, and I'm flying among the top flyers of the club on a windy day, making cross-wind landings with only three channels.

Again, I didn't get any pictures of me in the air, but that's because it's hard to work a camera and an R/C transmitter at the same time. It's also because when I get to flying, I don't think to ask someone to take pictures for me. But I'll work that out on future missions.

It looks like I'm going to join this club. It beats the other field. I might join that other club as well, just because it offers night flying, but I think I'll wait on that until I get a night flying plane together. It won't be long before I'm ready to fly at night again, but I still don't have my routine back, yet, and that's a personal requirement before I go night flying again.

Just remind me to bring the sun screen next time I go flying during the day. I got a little red. Oops!

I scoped out a couple of other unofficial potential flying spots on my way home from the field, but nothing really panned out. There was a place by the river that I was hoping would work, but it just wasn't quite suitable for take-offs and landings. Otherwise, it would have been a fun place to fly.

The other place I looked at turned out to be a farm with lots of horses around, so I figured that wouldn't work out too well. I wanted to check one other place, but I didn't have enough gas to get down there - I had just enough to get to the gas station, and I didn't want to turn around to go all the way back. But I'll check it at some point. There just aren't many potential places to fly out here, and I've been scanning Google maps in search of a place for quite some time now. It looks like maybe the flying clubs are the only real viable places. But I'm determined to find something. However, I am convinced I have to come out of the mountains to have any hope at all -- unless I want to build a sea plane and fly off a lake. There's lots of those around.

Well, my airplane and I are back home safely, and now I think it's time for me to take a shower. Too bad - it looks like the wind has stopped. I wouldn't mind shooting some touch-and-go's. Oh, well - that's what next time is for.
- posted by Bill @ 5:29 PM 0 comments

 
It has been four years since I have flown - almost. It looks like my last entry in this log was about my electric plane that I got. Well, I crashed that in a park two or three years ago (so I guess it hasn't been four years since I have flown), and I have not made any attempt to fix it. Li-po batteries scare me, anyway, so I don't have much desire to pursue electric flying. I don't need any extra threat of fire where I live now.

I got out my original Swizzle Stick and flew it for three flights at the Sierra Foothills R/C Flyers club. You can see it in this picture.



I flew the first two flights with one of my original Super Tigre 40 engines, but it was rather lacking in power (and has not much compression). So I put another, somewhat newer, Super Tigre engine on it for the last flight, and it flew much better. I had a little trouble landing, in fact, because I couldn't kill the throttle far enough. But I brought the plane home in one piece. As for me, I was falling apart, as I had been having some severe back pain over the past couple of days, but flying actually turned out to be good therapy for it - lots of walking, and standing rather than sitting most of the time.

I am going to check out the Beale Blackbirds flying club tomorrow. I just hope I can buy some fuel from someone...


- posted by Bill @ 7:32 PM 0 comments

 
Well, I got an electric park flyer airplane for Christmas - looks like a good one. This means I will be able to just go down to the field down the street on a whim and fly for a spell whenever the mood strikes. But I have a few things to learn about the electric stuff. These Li-Poly batteries scare me a little. They came with two pages of instructions that warn about the possibility of fire in almost every bullet point and paragraph. I really much prefer diesel engines, since they are simpler and I have an on-board generator system and can just fly and fly and fly as long as I have fuel...but there is no convenient place to fly around here. Hopefully, the park flyer will be satisfying, though I have a feeling I am going to want to buy some additional batteries so I can satisfy my duration requirements. 15 minutes a pop just isn't going to cut the mustard for me.

Stay tuned...
- posted by Bill @ 7:50 PM 0 comments

 
It seems I make one new entry in this blog every year. The saddest part is, nothing has changed since my last entry.

Stay tuned?
- posted by Bill @ 7:20 PM 0 comments