I thought I would share my little saga in here with everybody. It's one of those "It figures" stories.

I was getting pretty psyched up for this weekend. I always like Memorial Day and Labor Day weekends because they are long flying weekends, and on top of that yesterday was my day off so I was looking at 4 solid days of flying!!! yippee!!!!! Long weekends like this are great for me because I have 2 students training right now, so more days in a row helps get them closer to soloing.

Then along comes Murphy. Thursday morning I started feeling like crap and came up with a really nasty cough. Oh great, long weekend coming up and I'm getting sick. Who did I piss off???? So I went home and went to bed hoping to get over as much of it as I could before Friday morning. I didn't even wake up Friday morning until 10:30 am, so I guess I was sicker than I thought I was. Wake up and take some aspirin and I'm not feeling too bad. There is still 3 flying days left in the weekend, so it might turn out to be a decent weekend. Since I was feeling a bit better my son and I went out and mowed the flying field. Came home and went to bed last night hoping that today would be ok.

Woke up this morning, I didn't feel so great but I knew I'd be ok once I got some Advil in me. But something just didn't feel right. I wandered out of the bedroom and looked out of the window and they leaves on the trees were all hanging horizontal!!!! [X(] The wind was blowing so hard that the leaves couldn't even hand down. Around here it's usually calm at dawn the wind picks up as the day goes on. But not this morning. 38 mph winds when I got up. Crap. No stinking flying. I really pissed somebody off but good. Nothing left to do but go back to bed. sheez.

So that's how I sit right now. Half of a long weekend is shot and I still haven't touched a RC stick yet. And here I sit with all of my planes ready to fly. I was planning on flying all of my planes at least once this weekend, including trim flights on 2 new planes. Sheeez, now I'll consider myself lucky if I just some airtime. [>:]

I guess I need to clean up my lift huh?? I need to figure out whatever RC gods that I've pissed off and render an appropriate sacrifice to them to atone for my sins. [&o][&o][&o]

Ken

Sorry to hear of your mis-fortune. The wind has been pretty persisent here too. I even saw it blow it over 3 planes at the "Rally of the Giants". There were no real crashes that I am aware of but the wind did create some mis-haps on the runway. Either flopping planes over on take-off or after landing. Luckily none of them seemed to incurr any real damage. There seems to be nothing worse than to get sick just before a long weekend that you had big plans for. I hope you start to feel better soon & the wind makes it's way up into Missouri & Arkansas so you can fly tomorrow. Good luck Ken.

well the winds have been like that all week here too, and today is no different. The wind is usually the same here. It's calm all morning and picks up after 11. Not this week. It never got below 20 mph overnight and as soon as the sun peaked over it go over 30. I could fly in it but it's just no fun. What really sucks is I just got my new certification at work and a promotion and now am working swing shift. I was really stoked about it because this meant I could fly every day of the week if I wanted. I did get to maiden my GP cub last Sunday. Flew the hell out it the first day. 10 flights. Haven't got to fly since

I feel for ya Ken,

We have the same thing here. I spent the last 2 days getting some planes I have not flown for a while all checked out and ready to go. One of them is my Super Stearman which I love to fly but hate trying to land it. We have a planned fly-in tomorrow with a bunch of young people coming over so that's when I like to fly the Stearman since it's a looker and has smoke. I wanted to practice today with the smoke drawing smiley faces

Anyway, fast forward to 8:00am this morning. I go outside, get out the Stearman, fire it up (cycled the batteries last night) and was enjoying the sound of the G26 barking when I noticed the wind was picking up. No biggie. So I shut down the plane, load it up, toss in the Ultimate and all of it's stuff and my nice new Cap232 and fire up the truck.

I made my first stop to get coffee and when I came out the wind all but blew the coffee cup out of my hand, so I fgure that since the new club I fly at now is 20 miles away I'll head up there and see. Wrong...We use a full scale 20mph wind sock which means at 20mph the sock shuld be straight out and well, it was, and was showing no signs of even dropping a little bit

And to boot, this is only one hour from when I started the Stearman...

If the RC gods want me to sacrafice a plane, they are not going to get their wish . I've been a good boy all week so I guess it's time to try to yell at the weatherman since he said it was going to be 5 10 all weekend long.

I crashed my plane monday... only to get my new ARF Yesterday afternoon... spent all night putting it together.. Call my instructor.. Apparently I missed an email.. hes camping all weekend/week..


SO no flying this weekend lol >< and its about 80' and calm as can be sat/sunday..


Oh well.. gives me time to really go over the plane and make sure i put everything together right

hey Bill, I'm glad to hear you're trying the smiley face we discussed.[sm=thumbup.gif][sm=thumbup.gif][sm=thumbup.gif] I know you can do it!!

Which new Cap 232 do you get? I was just looking at the 27% GP Cap 232 for $320 at the "Rally of the Giants", unfortunately I had no money to jump on it.[:@] I'll be better prepaired for next years show!!

Raining here. Would like to think I'll fly later this weekend. Monday is supposed to be decent. Crossin' my fingers.

somegee

Don't feel bad, We've had 2 weeks of crappy weather here. It's finally getting nice, and the wife is dragging me up north to go CAMPING with her family.

CAMPING!!!!... ME???

My idea of "Roughing it" is staying at a "Motel 6" !!!

I told her, "If I wanted to sleep on dirt, I would have stayed SINGLE!"

That is the one I got. I'm using the Fuji 43 on it and it came in right at 14lbs. Should be a blast

RCKen,

Looking at [link=http://usairnet.com/cgi-bin/launch/code.cgi?sta=KFSI&model=avn&state=OK&Submit=Get+Fo recast]The Fort Sill Aviation Wind Forcast[/link], maybe Monday will be good for flying. The forecast has seemed mostly accurate in the past, although I don't know if such high winds for today were forecast... I didn't check it Thursday or Friday.

(fixed spelling)

Kris,
Yeah, I have that site bookmarked too. The wind today was definitely higher than they predicted. Tomorrow isn't looking too promising either.

I see you list Lawton has home. Have we met?? You name isn't ringing a bell

Ken

Yep. I was at the flying field a few times last fall with the SPAD Debonair plane made out of corrugated plastic and gutter pipe and an electric aerial camera plane (see [link=http://www.frostracing.com/RC]My Web Site[/link]) .

We just had our first baby in February and moved to a new house after that, so I have not been able to make it out to the field this year yet. Busy, Busy, Busy...

I think I have only flown four times (at home, in the country) since the baby arrived, but that's OK. I keep my runway mowed just in case I get a chance to fly

Be thankful that all you have is wind. I am suffering through wind and rain. Hoping that Monday is the nice day so we can sneak in a flight or 2. Good Luck, Dave

I feel for you all. Had almost 2 weeks of rain here a few weeks back. Luckly this weekend is turning out great here. I've been gettin pressure for a while now to cut the cord, lol, and today when not many ppl where at hte feild, one of the guys was helping me out, and just handed me tx and goes, just take her up, just don't tell anyone Hehe. Good flying. I'll be hoping for u all that the weather behaves atleast one of these days.
-John

UPDATE:
This weekend just keeps getting worse and worse. I'm feeling better now with my cold starting to get better, but........ the weather still isn't cooperating. Woke up at 6 am this morning to 20-25 mph winds and cloudy overcast skies. yuck. So now I'm down to hoping salavage one day out of this weekend for flying. Hoping that we get to fly tomorrow.


I have to wonder who I pissed off. I have been looking forward to this weekend for a couple of weeks now, and then this happens. I'm being punished for something, that's for sure!!! [:@]

Ken

Ken I'm not trying to rub it in or anything, buuuuuuuuuut Ole Man Murphy stayed away from Fayette. We've had three beautiful days for flying. Wind has been 0 mph from 4 pm till dark and 7 am till about 10 am with about 4-5 mph the rest of the daylight hours. I been thinking - I really wish RCKen was here not only could he get in some great flyingbut I would really like to meet him, maybe he could even give me a few pointers! I really hope your weekend got better,but right now I gotta go get more fuel. Ihope every one out there has a great Memorial Day and everyone remember our War Heros.

Ken, According to accuweather's website it looks like you've got wind in the mid to high teens most of the day. but slowing down to 8 to 10 mph around 3 or 4 pm. Which for your part of the country is pretty good. Please let me know if that turns to be fairly acurate or not. Sometimes this site is pretty good but other times they seem to lowball the wind. Anyway, I'm interested to see how close it is, & if you get to fly this afternoon or not. Thanks, we've got our fingers crossed for ya.

Hmmm...sorry to y'all who had wind and rain. Here in western PA, its been mid 80's to low 90's since saturday. 5 mph wind if that.
Had 3 great flying days. Sad part is that we are losing our field and this will be the last year (landlord is a freakin dolt). For me, the field is 1.5 miles from my house. The other club I belong to is a 20 minute drive. The club is looking at another field for next year though and here is the cool part, it has a nice pond on it for flying off and landing on water. Alot more space (acreage) and the landowner seems pretty anxious to have us there. We can even do a north, south east and west runways which can be 700 to 800 feet long.
Anyways, flew my new Kaos and Pete n' Poke and brushless corsair today. Awesome!!!! For those of you thinking about a Kaos, that plane is one of the most stable flying aircraft I've flown. And, it will do some very cool maneuvers in the air. Was doing flat spins and rolling circles with it. Mine is powered with a TT .46 Pro. Smooth and easy!!!!

Dave...

Final score: Murphy 3 - Ken 0

Woke up this morning with it being windy, but flyable. Feeling a bit better from the cold and wanting to scrape at least one flying day out of this weekend I loaded up and headed out. Day started off grand with the local field "wiseguy" smarting off with one of his jokes that seems to get under everybodies skin. already off to a grand start. I started off by maiden flighting an Ultra Sport 40+ that a buddy gave me. Flew like a dream. great. the day was getting better. Another great flight on the Ultra Sport. Decided to pull out the P-40. This is where the day took a very wrong turn. Pushed it for just one too many passes and ran out of fuel. Tried to stretch it past the tall grass and stalled from about 15 feet. Snaped the wing in half, repairable but not fun. Back to the Ultra Sport. Was testing inverted flight, it got a bit out of sorts so I pulled under out of inverted. I don't know if it was the wind or what, but it pulled into a wicked spin that I couldn't pull out of. Made a great start on my kindling supply for next winter. Totalled. [>:]

So Murphy kicked my butt this weekend. Oh well, it happens sometimes. Came home and cleaned off the work bench to get back to a couple of projects that were backburned and that I want to finish now.

Hope everybody else had a good weekend

Ken

Well for the last week , winds down here have been nil, ziltch, absolutely nothing. Clear skies, temps around 28 degrees centigrade.
So every day i have been drilling holes in the sky. This weather pattern looks like being the same for the next month or so. But , everything wasn't all roses, as i had a mystery problem with my computer, and this forum was frozen. In utter dispair i was able to get a pm to RcKen, and being the true gentleman he is, he offered remedies for me to try, to fix the problem. Well to keep the post short, Ken is the true genius. He told me what to do , and hey presto, i am once again able to get my fix in these forums. Thankyou Ken. I dedicated my first flight this morning to you Ken as promised , and spoke kindly to Mother Nature to send some good flying weather to you , in appreciation for what you did for me. Happy flying time to all my friends up north in USA.
Bill , from down-under

I guess were tied 3-0. That sucks loosing two in a day. I had one of those days in Febuary. Stalled one on a dead stick. stalled another on take off and beat the hell out of another just for fun. The wind still didn't let up out here. I probably could have gotten 1/2 hour with under 20MPH winds but didn't seem worth it. I did finish the fuse on my strike 40. At least I got somehting done right

Guys, you have to sacrifice a weatherman from time-to-time. The weather-Gods will then smile down on you.

Here in deep south Texas the standard 10-15mph breeze was blowing the whole weekend, but the flying was great.

Safe Flying!

Sorry to hear about the bad luck.....

No flying for me last weekend, but did make it to the Indy500 (yes all the way over from the old world). Which was excellent fun (and beautiful weather as well).

Hope next weekend will be better for you!

Johan

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...