Yak it up!

Had 3 flights with the Yak 54 yesterday.  All landings were from the west due to workers on the east end of the field to harvest sod, and luckily a light breeze came from the east to make landings easier!  The OS 120 ran fine, and the Yak flew well.  I was a bit rusty due to flying too many electric planes and choppers recently, but all went well.  Speaking of choppers, I flew the 130X just once and was downed by a bee!  Yes, as impossible and unbelievable as it sounds, a bee kept flying around my face and lid of my cap, continually getting in my vision!  I ended up moving around to lose it, but could not, and finally lost concentration and crashed from about 20' high.  Ended up stripping a main gear and the D gear.  Luckily I had just got a new main gear in the mail the day before, and had several extra D gears in the parts bag.  I repaired the 130X and tested it in the back yard...good to go again!

Quantum Improvement

Created a new fave painting this AM!  I feel I made a quantum leap improvement in how I paint leafy trees and bushes.  Next one will be even better.  I can already see things to improve, but this one is a feel good painting.  Main thing to remember for me is to have very light touch and to use the right amount of thinner to highlight the trees and bushes with color.  Good step forward.

Heavenly Hues

This makes my 77th painting, 6th for 2013!

FINALLY Painted Again!

Gosh it was a long layoff.  I put my painting equipment away in mid January to build the Bravata, finished that a month or more ago, and have just been too lazy to paint.  I watched Bob Ross in the interim though, maintained a spark, and today lit the fire and finally painted again.  This is my own creation, using colors I had in my head during the layoff.  Will use them again because I love em....shades of lavendar and orange.  This one came out ok for the first painting in 8 months, but I do need practice again.   The colors are more vivid than the photo picked up.  I believe this is painting #76, and 5th one for 2013.

Sherbet Peaks

Forgeting the Flight Log!

I flew on Sat Sept 21, and Th Sept 19.  On Th, I think I flew the Stinger II, 130X and MCPX.  On Sat, I flew only the 130X and MCPX, all 9 packs, before it began to rain.  I assembled the SNAFU to fly, but heard the tune of the slowly increasing pitter patter twack on the covering of the wings.  At that point, I put the assembled SNAFU into the truck bed and headed home.  On Th, all went well with a couple flights of the Stinger II.  On both days, the small helis were great, no crashes  and it is getting to be more and more fun, still very challenging, and requiring full and constant attention while in the air.

Bravo Bravata!

Oh yeah, I cured my engine running probs with a new RCEXL optokill switch in the Bravata.  The first (new) one is defective and deserves a hammer death, or at least being returned to the vendor for replacement.  The dummy light for the ignition did not blink an iota today, which if I did not see, I would have known via a dying engine.  Where I got max of two flights per day on each of the first three days of flying this bird, today I got in 4 flights with nary an issue.  I am loving this big bird.  So graceful and impressive in the air.  It looks real up there and creates instant nostalgia on low slow flybys!

I landed twice with no flaps, and twice with half flaps.  Due to a sprinkler on the West end of the runway, I made my landings on the sod farm.  The Bravata loves landings, holding its tail feathers up after the main landing gear have touched terra firma.  The mix of down elevator with half flaps at low throttle seems to be about right.  With this mix, the plane has almost no pitch up when the half flap is deployed.  Takeoffs are easy too, leaving ground in about 25' with very little throttle.  The rolls are a little faster now, but still slow and easy, after I maxed out the upward movements against the hinges AND decreased the aileron differential on the down aileron.  The Bravata loves to loop, and inverted flight requires surprisingly small down elevator input.  And it's pretty awesome seeing this huge plane do knife edge pretty effortlessly, with the nose slightly high.  Stall turns are easy peasy.

LOVING IT!

Also flew 2 packs through the 130X!

Gloomy Day but Fun Flying!

It was a pretty ugly day that seemed like a good day in the middle of Winter rather than a late Summer day!  Cool in the 60's, grey, damp, but winds under 3mph.  Tad, Quang, and I flew...where was everyone.  Stephen flew for a little bit till he totalled a foamy, and Ken came a little later.  I flew my MCPX twice, 130X four times, and Star four times.  While I had my Stinger II, I did not unpack it due to the threatening rain in the distance that never came over the field.  Tad had four packs through his new Red Goblin 500, and it looked smooth and pretty.  Also flew his Kaos Two.  Quang flew his glow 700 and also Trex 700, what a great chopper pilot.  Also flew his very fast Revolver on 8 cells...easily quicker than the Kaos Two.

Flight Log: 09/12/13

Got in one flight with the Sbach but the JB boys were vacuuming the farm intensely at the north end where our runway is.  So I flew 4 packs through the 130X and 3 packs through the MCPX.   Just one low intensity crash with the 130X when I got disoriented once, but no harm done.  Did not put the MCPX in the ground at all, but it is vibrating a lot and needs a new main shaft or something else to calm it down again.  At least it still flies.  Beautiful weather, nobody from the club there.  Two non-KRCA guys were there but they had AMA so I let them fly as my guest.  One says he has the KRCA membership form and just has to get it in to me.  Both are apparently members of the FlyAways up in Hillsboro, but one moved to Salem and he intends to join our club.  Both are full scale pilots!