I took the Super Kaos to the Cowtown Classic SPA Pattern event yesterday. What a great day!
The stall turn problem presented itself again but after the first round I knew what to expect so I had to remember to throttle down to get it to stall, run the throttle back to half and kick in rudder and the same direction of aileron...I know it's weird but it does a perfect stall turn.

The fourth round is when I had a problem. I think I just finished the 1/2 cuban and when I leveled out it started to climb on it's own so I knew I had elevator issues. The elevator while in a bank was really mushy. The whole time I was thinking the hinges failed and I was glad there were two elevator servos. I was afraid to turn base to final fearing that I may not be able to control it so I kept the base straight into a nicely manicured grass area and made a smooth landing. When I got to the plane I found the covering came off the horizontal stab and folded over the elevator making the elevator on that side useless. When I covered it I knew the white and red were cut too small and didn't overlap so when the black trim came off that was it for the covering. Plus it was over a glue line. I was rushing to get it done in time and when my helper cut the paper to where there was a gap between the two colors I knew it wasn't right but I didn't go back and finish it.


We were told we were taking the best of 4 rounds and drop the lowest so I was in the clear, but then they said we are flying 5 rounds...crap! I won the first two so after I heard this I thought I was sunk...but thanks to a role of Scotch boxing tape I found in my car I was able to clean the fuel off and tape it up. My 5th round flight started off good but after nailing the stall turn the rest was down hill from there and I knew I had a good chance of winning.





I managed to win the 5th round with the best flight I had of the day, tape and all. Maybe because I was too concerned with the tape coming off and crashing that I didn't over-think the maneuvers.

The drawings for the pilots at the end was AWESOME. Several kits were given away including a Super Kaos. Then I won a Futaba hat which I put back in the drawing because I don't use Futaba so my buddy Gene one it. Well the last drawing of the day I won this:



And I asked for my hat back HAAA!
I took the radio home and my wife took it from me, what could be better than that. Now she has a 2.4 MHZ radio.

They also made some great looking plaques. My club took all top three spots out of 5 in B-Novice...ok, my club was the only one in the class (our first year) and two didn't fly but have a look at the plaques:



They had someone take our photos, go get them developed, print up the plaques and assemble it all by the time the drawing was over; how cool is that.


Steve and the Thunderbirds did an awesome job. Many thanks to Gary Alphin for believing in me to call for him in...man, I hadn't even seen the B-Novice routine till two weeks prior and the wind prevented practicing except for three or four days so calling for a Sportsman level was difficult in that I wanted to see what the maneuver looked like but I fought the urge and kept the routine in order. I've got to say that was one of my highlights.
The weather was beautiful, the conversation great, the companionship overflowing...can't wait till the next event.

Tim