Trials and Tribulations of a Newbie - Part II

After "Joe's" brush with death with the Amtrack train I found that I didn't want another slow stick. I had been doing pretty good with it, had some nice landings and I had the plane doing pretty much what I wanted it to do so I decided to risk a step up. After browsing the hobby shop for some time and consulting with the very helpfull staff I settled on the GWS E-starter. Ailerons! I can handle that! Standing there, holding the box I daydreamed of lazy barrel rolls, Immelmans, inverted flight, and split-s's. It was the same cost as the Slow-stick so I figured it was a great bargain! Fortunately the electronics from the Slow Stick survived...

The plane came together very nicely...took just a couple of evenings which included a very nice black and ghost ship grey paint scheme. Looked a lot like the WWII spotter planes. I took her up for her maiden flight and she actually did wonderfully! I had a 5mph wind to cope with and found she handled it nicely. My runtime was pitifull tho...had only 5 minutes. I had started an approach for a landing and about 50 feet from the strip it just kinda stopped in the air! I settled it down right there and the closest thing to damage was a few cactus needles in it and a broken tail wheel. I had read somewhere in this forum where a guy had converted his E-starter into a tricycle landing gear set-up so I took it home to do just that. I borrowed some parts from the mangled slow stick and the set-up turned out quite nicely and the CG needed no adjusting.

I really, really wanted to fly the next weekend (I got the bug bad now...) but the wind was pretty fierce. The New Mexico State Song makes reference to the wind here. We went out to the airfield to see if the wind was a little less strong there. No such luck...even the sparrows were grounded... Not willing to go home just yet we went down into the valley down by the Balloon Fiesta Park. Hmmm...winds aren't near as bad... So I took out the plane and convinced my very skeptical girlfriend to give it a hand-launch. She was a natural! The E-starter did very well in the wind considering my very limited skills and a few mistakes that I was able to quickly recover from. Even got a couple of loops in... Coming in for a landing and at about 4 feet from the ground it got hit by a very hard cross-wind and it literally slammed into the ground upside down! Now the wind wants to play with it and starts rolling the plane across the ground. The ground was asphalt and this foam doesn't hold up well to it. Easy enough to fix tho except where the tip of one wing got shaved pretty good. The cowling is destroyed however....

But I had been reading the night before about the Tiger Moth 400....I wonder if they have one in stock at the hobby shop?

They did...and that's another story...