Welcome Beginners in Colorado
 

Anyone in Colorado, or anywhere for that matter, is welcome to come to my place in Yoder and fly RC here. I have 237 acres of land, a 300ft runway, and I'd be glad to help anyone learn to fly or just help them test fly their newest creation. I have 30 years experience in RC with 15 trophies in pattern competition. I charge nothing, there's no club, just have a current AMA membership is all I ask. It's real quiet out here, too quiet!!! Yoder, CO is 30 miles east of Colorado Springs.
-Tom

RE: Welcome Beginners in Colorado
 

WOW!!! Kinda makes me wish I was in Colorado again.

RE: Welcome Beginners in Colorado
 

Oh yea, I should mention that if you're too far away to drive, you're welcome to fly here with your RC stuff in your airplane and land on the grass strip here, it's 3800' long. Just had a friend in a C-150 come in and out yesterday. I fly in and out with my RV-4 all the time. Oh yea and if your model is too big to land on the 300' strip, just go ahead and use the 3800' grass strip!

RE: Welcome Beginners in Colorado
 

That's a great offer Tom. Lots of guys in your neck of the woods should take you up in it. The world needs more folks like you. Keep up the good work and happy flying.

Tom

RE: Welcome Beginners in Colorado
 

Oh yea, I forgot to add, bring all your guns and shoot on the 500yd range here. -Tom

RE: Welcome Beginners in Colorado
 

Hi Tom, I wish we were close to you. How is your weather now ?  We are on the Canadian border in Washington right by the sound (Birch Bay) and we have had rain or snow constantly since November so I must fly my simulater and wait for a dry warmer day. Hope it's better where you are..


AltaTed

RE: Welcome Beginners in Colorado
 

Today it's going to be 49f, a rather warm day. I parked my 17' camper right next to the pit area so I can fly right down to 20f if the wind isn't blowing hard. I just jump back inside with the transmitter and the model if it's a smaller one, and charge the li-po's and change them out. With the camper a toasty 70f, within 5min I'm warm enough to go back out and fly some more. The camper has three solar arrays on the roof, so it recharges itself every day. Basically, I'm flying with solar power.

RE: Welcome Beginners in Colorado
 

Sounds great there compared to ours especially.  We are so darn tired of rain rain rain, and predicted snow again in a few days. We just got rid of a weeks snow on the ground yesterday when we got up to 33 degrees and rain melted all of it. It's 37 degree rain now.

I sure hope we can fly before our usually windy March.

AltaTed

RE: Welcome Beginners in Colorado
 

It's not a bad winter out here on the prairie compared to the mountain areas of Colorado. It's 6 months of winter there and only the usual 3 months here. Of course in Australia it is full-blown summer, just the cure for any winter blues.

RE: Welcome Beginners in Colorado
 

Are you an Aussie ?

I came from Southern California to here in 1992..

AltaTed

RE: Welcome Beginners in Colorado
 

No, I'm a New Yorker, transplanted to Colorado by choice in 2007.

RE: Welcome Beginners in Colorado
 

Hi Tom,  We have some family in Colorao Springs and friends that raise Alpacas (as we used to) in Wheat Ridge.  Also alpaca friends in Estes Park so we travel to visit them from time to time.  I see your sort of in the middle in nice flat country. Great for model planes.  We have lots of flat open areas here too.  My property has plenty of room for flying but far too many trees so I head elsewhere for my flying and it's not yet developed to where I will call my self a beginner yet. [:o]

I'm spending lots of time on Clear View hoping some will rub off on me for the real flying stuff.

AltaTed

RE: Welcome Beginners in Colorado
 

I have a friend in Falcon, CO that raised llamas, Robert was his name. Keep up the sim flying, the skills do transfer over, especially the left/right coming at you parts.

RE: Welcome Beginners in Colorado
 

Tom,

How close are you to the PP R/C field(off Judge Orr Rd.)? You have any pictures of the area?

RE: Welcome Beginners in Colorado
 

I am 30 miles from the PP R/C club. Here are some pics, I was able to upload them by editing the message and uploading. It would not work to upload them to a new message.

RE: Welcome Beginners in Colorado
 

Tom, you are right on with the plane comming right towards us.  Thats about the biggest problem area I'm gust beginning to handle after countless hours on the simulator. I feel it's less difficult actually flying except in a tight spot that I have not allowed myself to get into, it almost easier actually flying.

Placing an image on this site is not hard one you try it.  Go to the top bar of this area where we write and the thrid icon from the right end gives you a insert image that I have used but some times it's testy and fails you.  I did on several days ago inserting a jpg picture and it worked great.

AltaTed

RE: Welcome Beginners in Colorado
 

Ok I was able to finally upload some pictures to my previous post, although they were the same size when I uploaded them I don't know why one is huge and the other is a thumbnail. Anyway, it's a wide open area! Here's some other pictures, it is making only the first one a thumbnail, the rest are full sized.
I use one 4x8 plywood sheet for starting up the planes, and the other 4x8 is a helipad for my Raptor 50.

RE: Welcome Beginners in Colorado
 

Tom, You pictures worked great.  Just what I expected from your area.  I'm trying to attach a picture of mine now.

AltaTed

[img]C:\Users\Ted\Desktop\Snow 3[/img]

RE: Welcome Beginners in Colorado
 

I finally was ale to upload the pictures of our yard now..

AltaTed</p>

RE: Welcome Beginners in Colorado
 

Do any of you have or have seen a Jetiger fly ?  I just got one for Christmas and wonder how they fly and handle.  I'm not going to be able to try it out until we have decent weather and would like to know anything about the bird.  It looks good and say's fly me as it sits and waits for me to take it out.

I just posted pictures of what our yard and weather look like so you can see why I have yet to get out with it.

AltaTed

RE: Welcome Beginners in Colorado
 

Oh you have a lot of model airplane grabbers in your yard, its' really a pain when they get stuck high up. Only thing to do is make some skis for your planes! I've done skis on a Sig Kadet Seniorita and it was mad fun. I haven't seen a Jetiger fly, but there's several videos on Youtube of them tearing up the sky, here's the url for one: [link=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9gbospRH-M&feature=fvw]Jetiger flying[/link] .
Looks like an extremely fast and agile flying wing delta type, this is extremely advanced, how are your flying skills?

RE: Welcome Beginners in Colorado
 

Thanks for the address to the demo of the Jetiger. I am close to intimidated by this little screamerother than it is also a stable flying plane at slower speeds which will help be break into the faster flying abilities after flying my 40" Cub around. This will be an interesting transition. This bird was selected because it's supposed to be friendly to flyers that are not too talented. Thats me, no claims made on my flying talent at all. I have yet to even break my Cub but did blow it's 35A ESC and now take a spare with me.

I cut the cover off the bad one and foundsome very good looking electronie underthe cover. I'm attaching pictures of my Cub and the ESC uncovered so you can see what makes one tick. No wonder they are expensive.

AltaTed


&lt;&lt;Moderator edit to fix large thumbnail issue&gt;&gt;

RE: Welcome Beginners in Colorado
 

See if you can get some cooling air blasting onto your ESC, that should help them last. I have seen the transistors on an ESC shine WHITE hot like a 100watt lightbulb. Needless to say, that one was toasted. I had a motor with heavy cogging, and I think the timing was off, the prop would sometimes stutter back and forth before starting up. The Jetiger can probably be slowed down but that will take skill as well. Best thing would be to get some airtime with it before trying to hand launch it yourself, that's the trickiest part. There's another Jetiger video where the guy launched it, and the motor torque put it in a 90 deg right bank within 5 feet of the launch, and he corrected it and flew out of that, which is what you have to be capable of doing when you fly something fast and responsive and high-powered. Then there's the question of getting it in trim. If it's out of trim it will take an extreme amount of skill to get it high enough to trim it out. If you have a simulator, you can challenge yourself by flying a fast responsive aerobatic plane with the trims moved way off center. Just practice flying it around in the out of trim condition where you are not relying on the centering springs on the sticks to fly straight, you just hold the sticks where they need to be held to fly the plane straight. I have heard of experts removing the springs from the sticks on their radios just for a new thrill.

RE: Welcome Beginners in Colorado
 

The ESC that failed  happend before I even took off. I plugged the battery in and it began to smoke from a cold start. The prop never even turned over that time so I headed back here with no flying in at all that trip. They replaced to ESC right away in warranty. 

I'm working at my simulator like crazy though I just this week got Clear View and it did fine for the first few days. But,,, yesterday and today no matter how many times I calibrate the transmitter and reset everything, change to different  planes that did fine before, they all turn sideways during lift off, or run into trees I can't even see just flying along or just nose dive straight down and I have no control of them or head straight up.  I'm going to reload the program next and see if this clears up.

What simulator program do you use?  I have FMS and Clear View. FMS works fine but I don't like the graphics. The Clearview graphics look great but if I can't work at practice flying due to lack of control it's not doing me much good.  I have trouble with their perspective distances when it was working and often I landed short when I thought I was over the end of strip. I'm going to let Clear View know what trouble I have. I can use any one of 3 transmitters I have with similar lack of control.


    AltaTed
AltaTed

RE: Welcome Beginners in Colorado
 

I use Ikarus Aerofly Professional Deluxe sim, it's prob 15 years old but it works well. The controllers can be tricky to set up, my controller doesn't have a dead zone in the centering so it's hard to keep it centered, but for model flying it's unnoticeable.