Holy Cow Ken, Not a fun weekend at all.

This is gonna be kinda long so bear with me as it was a very interesting 2 days.

Just to get everyone started, we are surrounded by 4 cell towers, the radio tower for the PA State Police Headquarters, and a tower for the PA Fish and Game commision. At both ends of the runway, in the far corners extending out about 25 yards sometimes out a little further and up to about 50 feet, we often take a hit. Somedays are worse than others, Saturday was bad, Sunday was even worse. Standard FM receivers just allow the plane to do whatever it feels like, PCM locks out for a up to a couple of seconds. Ok, all that being said, it's really not too bad if you stay out of those areas as we have gobs of flying space so it's easy to stay away from. Saturday we did not fly, high winds, Sunday was low 90's, the occasional 10mph gust, but mostly calm, Monday almost a carbon copy of Sunday but a little more humidity

Although I did not get out on Saturday we had a crowd on Sunday and allot of flying and a couple of crashes. Just before I got there, someone planted an older H9 Cap. I was told he went into lockout in the infamous corner. Long time member, knows better than to be in that corner. I saw the aftermath, not much left, including breaking the DA50 into 3 pieces. Same member, now flying his brand new GP Skybolt ARF with a Saito 125 on it's maiden. He's doing really well and decides to do an outside loop, pulls it really tight at the bottom and we watch the bottom wing depart, taking the top wing with it. Plane is totalled. We found one of the bottom wing bolts for it sitting on the table. I guess it helps having both wing bolts in but you gotta admit, he was wringing it out pretty well up until that point. BTW, great looking plane if you like bipes and all who know me know I love bipes.

I took 3 planes to the field on Saturday, my CG Sukhoi, now using the new OS120AX. What an engine this thing is. It flies the plane way better than the YS140 ever did and I'm even using the exact same prop and half the amount of nitro and it's rich enough that it spits raw fuel at you every now and then. I also took my GP Gene Soucy Extra anbd my trusty 4*60. I got 4 excellent flights on each. I also maidened 2 other planes for a grand total of 14 flights. Everything exceopt the 4* uses PCM. My butt was wore out by the time I packed up and went home.

Now it's Monday and off to the field I go, although I'm pretty stiff and sore from Sunday with all the flying and sunburn to match. I take the Sukhoi and my brand new GP Cap232 with the Fuji 43 for it's maiden. I had only finished it that morning so I charge everything on the way to the field. I get there and as I'm driving up I see 3 planes in the air racing. One is a three channel, not sure of the make, another is an ME109 25 size with an OS25 engine and another is a "Advance". All three are racing and doing very well, these three and one that showed up later put on a heck of a show all day long chasing each other around.

Ok, back to my Cap maiden. Everything is now all charged so I decided to assemble it, do my final checks and fly it. I load test the plane, install the wing, switch on the 10X, then the plane and nothing happens, now mind you I had just tuned the engine not an hour earler at home. I'm now going nuts, so I take the wing back off, verify loaded and unloaded voltage, unplugged the regulator from the reciever and verify 6 volts there. So now I'm really scratching my head. I pull the crystal out, try a new one, nothing, so now I'm left with thinking the reciever went bad but I'm having a hard time believing that so I decide to just let it all sit there and go sit in the shade and ponder what happened.

Now here is the best part. I'm sitting there watching the guy that bought my old Funtana90 wring it out, he flies the same channel number I do, remember that, it's important. For reasons I cannot explain, I grab my TX and when I do, instead of grabbing it by the handle like I normally do, I grabbed it by the back and I feel something sharp poke me in the fingers. I flip the radio over and low and behold, I LEFT THE FRIGGIN MODULE IN THE TX CASE. [X(][&:]. Talk about feeling stupid. I was even more dumb for telling everyone there what I did so I paid that price for about 10 minutes. Now why do I take my module out of the radio, there is mainly three reasons, one, I use the stock module for my planes that have crystals and the new JR Synthesized module for my planes that use the Synthesized recievers so I have 2 different modules. Two, I have burned up a module once because my radio case is tight and one time I must have either lef the radio on or it turned on when I closed the case, third, the guy that flies the Funtana is also on the same channel and flies just about as much as I do so there are times I may be setting a mix so I make sure the module is out so I do not shoot him down.

Ok, so now I fire up the plane, taxi out and take off, remember, this is a maiden so yep, I'm shaking like a teenager of his first date. I go up about 100 feet level out and add a single click each of left aileron and up elevator only to turn upwind and remove both settings. So I fly it around for 5 minutes noting jsut how well it tracks, it's a Cap, it's supposed to track well. I'm shaking pretty bad so I setup to land and really grease the puppy in. This thing lands very slow, I landed it very nose high to see if it drops a wing and nope, no noticable drop. I stalled it up high and all it did was drop the nose. GP did this one right, just like they did on the GP Ultimate I have.

So I sit and let my nerves calm a bit and all the while I'm watching others fly and seeing them taking small hits in areas we normally do not have a problem. They all land so I decide to go again and do a little more. So I take off, fly a few loops, this thing knife edges without any mixes and all, it does not roll out, it only very slightly pitches to the gear, an inverted 45 degree upline shows a nice shallow arc as it ever so slowly drops the nose, mind you this is the second flight and I see this thing will not need a lot of trimming. Full power vertical climbs show it slowing after about 300 feet but the engine has only six flights and I am somewhat over-propped so no big deal, but the plane just goes straight up, no pull to one side or the other, amazing.

Now I setup for landing and it's coming in so nice and pretty and I'm dead center on the runway approach and into lockout I go, but since I have everything set to hold the last good position, it just keeps coming in jsut like nothing happened. Now this is weird, I've never had a lockout on this approach before and the previous flight showed no problems at all. Anyway the lockout only lasts about a second and I land it ever so slowly amongst loud clapping from the peanut gallery. I decide to go back up so I take right back off and do some inverted work and setup to land again, this time I'm on the exact same approach but instead of getting a lockout, the palne pitches almost vertical with the power at idle so now I'm into instant panic but I also know not to horse a Cqp around so I bury the throttle to full and pull out and straight up. Now I'm back to shaking but we have no wind so I figure I'll land from the other direction. This turned out to be a really bad choice, once again, I'm dead center of the runway on a very long approach and I'm ready for anything. Just over the runway threshold, she rolls into a knife edge at about 50 feet and goes into a lockout, I get it back right away long enough to get it level and add powerr and she rolls again into the same knife edge only this time with power. During the previous recovery I was able to get some altitude but now I have power and I'm in lockout again. This lockout has me really nervous as it is not coming out of it and just before the wing hits the ground she rolls level and powers out. Now I'm really shaking so I fly straight out from me turn around and do an 45 degree angled approach and land [&:].

Once I sit down, several people make the comment they though for sure it was toast but were amazed I pulled it out. I told them I had to go and clean my shorts out.

I never did fly the Sukhoi since I was not having the best of days. I saw a few others fly after my last flight on the Cap and they had no problems at all so this got me thinking and late last night I checked and when I wiggled the wires from the regulator to receiver, the plane would either glitch or lockout. This is very usual for Fromeco products so they will be getting it back to let them look at it. It was bought brand new for this plane.


Sorry for the very long post...