A good SATURDAY report :
The lady friend came around to fix up my house and literally ORDERED me to go "play" with my planes so she could get ON with the chores. YIPEEEE ! so I pack up the T-34 and the INNOVATOR EXP heli, and drive 42 miles to the Municipal RC airport/Park provided by the city of Houston, Dick Scobee RC airport. With a dog-sitter in the house, I am spared the dog who is a bit of a nuisance.
I arrive and see from the distance there must be at least 50 or 60cars and just a few parking slots open. Wind is about 10mph (gusting), not one cloud in the sky and 60F...great flying weather. I very seldom go there because it's far, today I am greeted and recognized by 3 or 4 flyers, makes me feel great. I am pushed to fly the T-34 which they claim looks "good". So I take it to the runway, line up into the breeze and roll it for about 100foot . When I apply elevator input, just the slightest touch ! the plane rotates from a flat natural lift-off into a 45+ degrees climb !!!!!! GWWARRSSHH ! way too much elevator; at about 50foot in the air : THE WHOLE TOP OF THE PLANE ( the canopy ! ) blows clear OFF.... so I input right rudder only, straighten the plane for level flight, now flying downwind I have a galloping wild horse, turbulence is probably taking control. Fly into a base leg, then final, save about 14induced stalls from the "modified" fuse and finally make a very soft landing, rolling up to almost touch the fallen canopy on the ground> yuch ! back home: need to adjust / REDUCE the deflection on the elevator, also the AILERONS. Never got a chance to test the efficiency of the FLAPS, not yet. NEXT: I take the INNOVATOR EXP over to the heli pad where an Englishman (from his accent) is flying the 700NITRO FLYBARLESS. Boy, is he a WorldClass flyer ! ... like: flying backwards in giant size loops, the bottoms at 3ft off the grass with snapping/piros at each quarter...etc etc....so I start up a chat with this fellow, Brit. meeting Brit. so it goes well. I ask him to take the HELI up for a bit, since I have only HOVERED IT in my driveway. So he does that for me, gets it nicely trimmed out ( a bit of left "rudder" + "aileron" which he is saying may be just compensating for slight crosswind when the motor STOPS COLD, at eight feet up in the air>! crap: so the heli falls vertical onto the grass and only the left legs on the skids break. So now I KNOW that the heli is a great flyier, did not get to find out if it will be OK to invert itself into upside/down, but still. Sending off for a pair of skids, replacing them and will pay better attention to these funky TT batteries. Wonder WHAT caused it to shut down so suddenly.
All in all a great afternoon, SUN and fun, hanging out with ModelPlanes/helis was a great thing...... Have made arrangements with the Englishman for tomorrow : to take the RAPTOR and get it flying right. He recommends that I STICK with the RAPTOR and do nothing ELSE until I have enough RE-assurance in my flying to handle "different types" of helicopters. So : tomorrow will do the RAPTOR dance and report how it went. Batteries charging up, fuel in the bottle, GO GO GO
another stupid waste of y'alls time , reading all this JUNK.....but it was a GOOD DAY ! RICK the really old one, ha (but goodie)
I had the cancorder with me but did not use it. Shame, because the T/O on the T-34 would have been a good souvenir