Autumn's here, who's been flying?

[leccyflyer]

Braw morning at the club site - zero wind, blue skies, very high wispy cirrus and a great turnout with some excellent models. Another session with Bob's excellent Buchon 109 depron o/d, then clubmate Mike turned up with a lovely Flair Fokker DR1 and proceeded to nail every landing -a fantastic effort.

 

 

I really enjoyed the morning and had lots of great flights, not at all marred by the maiden flight mishap with my Go Jet. The model got away lovely from the handlaunch, no shortage of power and very stable. However after flying about for a bit, she was climbing higher and up to maybe 100 feet or so. I put in some down elevator to bring her down a touch, but the Go Jet went into a vertical dive, from which there was no return. I did close the throttle before impact but it was a spectacular vertical crash from 100 feet, straight in, ending up in the dip, not visible from the pits. I fully expected to find a wide debris field and the model destroyed, but laughed out loud when I reached the model, buried to just short of the wing and sticking vertically out of the field.

 

Damage to the airframe was minimal, but the motor was full of mud, the prop broken, the lipo wires severed and, when I got back to the workshop the motor shaft is bent. The model survived beautifully though. I believe that the elevator stuck in the down position and wouldn't come back to up elevator. The model flew so nicely with no elevator input I'm thinking of just fixing them in place and flying single channel.

 

[GrumpyGnome]

Finally stopped raining; calm; blue skies!. Batteries on charge....... 

[leccyflyer]

Nice morning which dawned with thick fog but which burned off to give a very pleasant November morning with very light winds, strengthening through the morning to around 7mph, but still perfectly flyable. Got some good flights in and enjoying the challenge of flying the wee Super 30 single channel on the button with my Digimac III converted set - am now only using the sticks for landing on our pretty tight strip.

[Eric Robson]

Good day in the North East, cold wind when the clouds covered the sun, 7 turned out I flew my Spitfire and Ju 87 all good flights. 

[GrumpyGnome]

Not so good here. Wind gradually increased, and I arrived at the field to find it just about flyable.

 

Andy flew his little Viper, Kingfisher, and Blaze successfully. Kev's new Texan deadsticked on maiden, damaging a wing, leaving him with his WottyXL. My Ruckus also deadsticked, damaging an aileron servo. Then the little petrol engine in myWot4 refused to play.

 

Had a chat, left in light rain.

[leccyflyer]

Eric- is that the FMS JU87G? How do you find her to fly? I've removed the guns on mine and 3D printed the parts for a working bomb release trapeze, kitted out the cockpit, but have yet to fly the model. I'm stopping short of modifying the pointy wing tips to emulate a Battle of Britain Ju87D version, but might repaint the markings at least - had to have a bomb drop though,

[Eric Robson]

Hi Brian,  it is the FMS  it was given to me, it had been well flown with a few dings and repairs. I had no instructions and initially flew it on 3s 3000 batteries, I now use 4s 2900.  It flys OK it may be a little tail heavy as today the wind became stronger and it was twitchy on the controls, I reduced the low rates on ailerons and elevator which steadied a lot.

Today is the first time I have had the guns on it did not make any difference to the flying characteristics but the reduction in elevator travel  was too much for landing as I was unable to get the tail down on the 2nd flight and it nosed over damaging the gun's so I removed them and carried on flying. 

There is a lot more to cutting the tips off to make it an 87B the canopy and front end are much different. 

Not all the D's had the tank buster guns so you will be OK with it as is  but I suspect you know all this. Good luck with the bomb drop hitting the target will not be easy😄

[J D 8]

                  I have twin bombs on my slow flying  Major Mannock, lucky to hit the strip, and we have a pretty big strip.😁  Bombs gone in pic.

  

[Nick Cripps]

I wasn't planning on going flying today thanks to forecast winds of 15mph gusting 25mph so nothing was charged and ready to go when the WhatsApp messages started coming in this morning. The field is still soggy but with only small areas of water I decided to quickly remove the floats and install the winter wheels on my trusty ARTF Wot 4, knowing that the OS55AX would drag it through any weather.

 

Of course at the field, the wind felt stronger so there was considerably more talking than flying going on but a reasonable turnout despite having to still drive through a flooded section of the lane approaching the field. I just had the one flight, stretching a tankful of fuel out to over 12 minutes, including several touch & goes and 3 separate landings which had to be across the width of the runway as the preferred runway (in the prevailing wind direction) still had patches of surface water. I also discovered that the Wot 4 was capable of knife-edge spins, something I'd not tried with this particular model before, so a worthwhile and enjoyable trip out this morning.

 

More wind and rain to come over the next several days but a better forecast for Saturday - fingers crossed!

 

[Peter Jenkins]

1 hour ago, Nick Cripps said:

I also discovered that the Wot 4 was capable of knife-edge spins, something I'd not tried with this particular model before, so a worthwhile and enjoyable trip out this morning.

 

 

How interesting.  What is a KE spin and how do you enter it?

[GrumpyGnome]

https://www.modelairplanenews.com/5-steps-to-fly-the-knife-edge-spin/

[Geoff S]

1 hour ago, Nick Cripps said:

I wasn't planning on going flying today thanks to forecast winds of 15mph gusting 25mph so nothing was charged and ready to go when the WhatsApp messages started coming in this morning. The field is still soggy but with only small areas of water I decided to quickly remove the floats and install the winter wheels on my trusty ARTF Wot 4, knowing that the OS55AX would drag it through any weather.

 

Of course at the field, the wind felt stronger so there was considerably more talking than flying going on but a reasonable turnout despite having to still drive through a flooded section of the lane approaching the field. I just had the one flight, stretching a tankful of fuel out to over 12 minutes, including several touch & goes and 3 separate landings which had to be across the width of the runway as the preferred runway (in the prevailing wind direction) still had patches of surface water. I also discovered that the Wot 4 was capable of knife-edge spins, something I'd not tried with this particular model before, so a worthwhile and enjoyable trip out this morning.

 

More wind and rain to come over the next several days but a better forecast for Saturday - fingers crossed!

 

 

That lane is certainly prone to flooding.  I'm glad we no longer live in Sawley with all the rain we've had.  If we flood at our current house then most of the country will be underwater!  Looks like you had a decent day and Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station stand out well 👍

[Peter Jenkins]

1 hour ago, GrumpyGnome said:

https://www.modelairplanenews.com/5-steps-to-fly-the-knife-edge-spin/

Thank you GG.  I must say I'd never heard of this but then I just fly precision aerobatics and not 3D aeros.  Reading the article is sounds like the entry is identical to a negative snap or flick roll.  However, in a negative snap the rudder goes in the opposite direction to the ailerons as it's now "underneath" so to speak.  Having read through the instructions, it rather sounds like a sustained snap roll where the aircraft descends until controls are centred.  I shall try this out but I suspect that for this to work you need much larger control deflections that we use in precision aerobatics.  I will see how it goes.  Thanks for the information.

[Nick Cripps]

1 minute ago, Peter Jenkins said:

Thank you GG.  I must say I'd never heard of this but then I just fly precision aerobatics and not 3D aeros.  Reading the article is sounds like the entry is identical to a negative snap or flick roll.  However, in a negative snap the rudder goes in the opposite direction to the ailerons as it's now "underneath" so to speak.  Having read through the instructions, it rather sounds like a sustained snap roll where the aircraft descends until controls are centred.  I shall try this out but I suspect that for this to work you need much larger control deflections that we use in precision aerobatics.  I will see how it goes.  Thanks for the information.

 

The knife-edge spin is often known as the "Hanno Screw" after the many times champion aerobatic pilot Hanno Prettner who I understand invented it. My method is to put the model into an inverted spin (with rudder and ailerons in opposite directions, as you say Peter), slowly open the throttle and then reverse the ailerons to match the rudder direction. The aircraft then rotates around the wing rather than the fuselage in a conventional spin. Make sure you start with plenty of height for this one as it descends very rapidly in knife edge!

 

NB - sorry if this has already been covered in the Model Airplane News article - it timed out for me and wouldn't open.

[Peter Jenkins]

Thank you for that Nick.   I'm trying to decide whether to try it with my F3A bird or my Wot 4!  I prefer your description of how to enter the Hanno Screw.  The article just said to apply down elevator and full aileron and rudder in the same direction to enter but I couldn't envisage how that would do anything other than go into a negative snap.  You description sounds much more sensible.   I'll try that - on the Wottie to begin with.

[john stones 1 - Moderator]

8 minutes ago, Peter Jenkins said:

Thank you for that Nick.   I'm trying to decide whether to try it with my F3A bird or my Wot 4!  I prefer your description of how to enter the Hanno Screw.  The article just said to apply down elevator and full aileron and rudder in the same direction to enter but I couldn't envisage how that would do anything other than go into a negative snap.  You description sounds much more sensible.   I'll try that - on the Wottie to begin with.

 

Hannos party piece, your pattern model will do it.

 

[Nick Cripps]

It's a few years since I last tried it and what surprised me today was to see that as I swapped over the aileron position it would initially start to spin inverted in the opposite direction before dropping into the knife-edge spin.

 

The Wot 4 does it well Peter but you'll probably need to increase control throws quite a bit above your normal F3A settings, especially the elevator. Let me know how you get on (perhaps we should follow this up in your aerobatics thread?).

 

I'll explore it a bit more myself next time as I cut the session short today due to deteriorating weather conditions.

[Peter Jenkins]

30 minutes ago, Nick Cripps said:

 Let me know how you get on (perhaps we should follow this up in your aerobatics thread?

Sounds like a good idea as we'll be off thread here.  Might be sometime given what's coming westher-wise!  

[Adrian Smith 1]

Lots of examples on YouTube, Peter.

[Peter Jenkins]

Thanks Adrian.  Mind you, I have enough to practice on the new FAI schedule without adding in a completely different manoeuvre!

[Paul De Tourtoulon]

9 months hanging up in my garage with a half full fuel tank, I washed  it down, charged up the radio battery filled it up with fuel a a quick spin with the started, and to my surprise the old Laser .75 (? ) started straight away, 3 good long flights no twiddling with the carb needles, one of the wheels came a part on the second landing, nothing that a couple of 6" screws wouldn't fix,😄 mind you it was a bit nippy at 17°c,,,

 

 it always seems to come out sideways !

 

 

[Peter Jenkins]

Don't take photos at the equator! 🤣🤣

[aidan mcatamney]

3 hours ago, Paul De Tourtoulon said:

9 months hanging up in my garage with a half full fuel tank, I washed  it down, charged up the radio battery filled it up with fuel a a quick spin with the started, and to my surprise the old Laser .75 (? ) started straight away, 3 good long flights no twiddling with the carb needles, one of the wheels came a part on the second landing, nothing that a couple of 6" screws wouldn't fix,😄 mind you it was a bit nippy at 17°c,,,

 

 it always seems to come out sideways !

 

 

Nice plane.  Is that the Hangar 9 version? 

[Paul De Tourtoulon]

12 hours ago, aidan mcatamney said:

Nice plane.  Is that the Hangar 9 version? 

It Looks like it,, I bought it half built and the Laser .75 ( ? ) a non runner,,

https://www.ricardo.ch/fr/a/hangar-9-fokker-d-vii-60-arf-moteur-saito-fa-82-(han4675)-1232168622/

[leccyflyer]

Lovely morning here today, once the mist had burned off, so had an unplanned couple of hours at the club field with some very enjoyable flights with the wee Volantex warbirds and a couple of my Parkzone funfighters, the Spitfire IX and P-47D. The wind increased in strength a bit through the morning, but it wasn't in too bad a direction and, though soft and wet underfoot it was very cold and frosty to kick off, so my first chance to trial my new thermal flying suit which was proper toasty, so I'm set fair for the coming winter flying sessions.

 

Here's mine and Bob's Volantex 109s - Bob's has been repainted slightly as Gelb 6, with the addition of some squadron markings and a yellow spinner. Mine is as supplied. I also printed some wee pilots for the forthcoming clear canopy version of the Me109 which should be arriving any day now. My Weiss 14 has the 4 white kill markings on the rudder - one more kill and it'll be an Ace. 🙂

 

Edited November 10, 2023 by leccyflyer