Fly With Catawba Valley RC

Not a lot to report other than perfect weather after about 1:30PM. Shirtsleeve temps with wind at or below 2-3MPH. Yeah Al, it was a little muddy, but that beats cold and windy!

Jim Bates showed up with a heavily repaired F-16 ducted fan jet, but due to (likely) ESC problems that caused radically “pulsing” power levels, he only flew a half-circle before landing for a look-see. We checked the battery (OK) and substituted another fresh one, but the same problem persisted. Jim only brought that one plane, so he was done for the day.

Dick Blackburn stopped by to watch but didn’t fly.

I got in four flights each with the Timber-X and ParkMaster. My typical back-and-forth oval routine is pretty dull stuff for spectators, but every bit of stick time I get helps me. I spent a lot of time trimming the X for 3000mA 3s and then 2200mA 4s batteries, most of it in “manual” mode due to several disturbing burps in SAFE. After thinking about it, I reckon the SAFE problems were due to my inputting too many repeated trim adjustments without letting the SAFE system catch up with what I was trying to tell it to do. Anyway I feel I’m at a point now where I can manually adjust the control linkage on the Timber-X to lock things in and then reset the trims to zero.

None of the video I shot was all that interesting except as a diary for me, so I won’t post anything.

My plan is to show up next Monday to watch (and record) Billy’s rebuilt Cub’s maiden flights. Really looking forward to that. Anything in between now and then will be on short notice if the weather moderates from predictions.

Lonnie

Gents,

The following members and guests showed up today at the field:

Jim Bates, Dick Blackburn, Lonnie Hagadorn, Randall Hendrix, Bill Holder, Wayne Huffman, Don Jerch, Bill McCain, Mark McCellen, Alan Roberts and Billy West.

I took still pictures of all attendees and most of the planes that were flown today. A few of my faves are attached, including the Visionaire that Billy screwed into the ground in honor of the coronation of our new president!

Gents,

Too windy for me to fly today, but that didn’t stop Billy West and Steve Tisi! I got there a little late and missed seeing Steve fly his Cessna, but I have movies of him with his quad in the air.

As usual, Billy had a number of aircraft with him, including a powered sailplane, a tiny UMX Gee Bee, a crazy-flying X350 and an Horizon Twist. Several pictures are attached, and I’ll put the videos on line once I get a chance to do some editing.

Beautiful day, by the way . . .

Lonnie

CVRC 22 Feb 2, 2019

In the immortal words of one of North Carolina’s favorite son’s.

WEELL GAAAAWWWWLLLY!!

Jim Nabors if you haven’t guessed.

Lonnie, for a “fill in” (I HOPE) you did a great job. The fact that the Security Officer (sounds like soviet Russia), “ordered” you to fill in, is something that the club needs to address.

I am, TOTALLY FLABBERGASTED, that ya’ll can carry on with me being there.

Wished I could have been there. All goes well and the creek don’t rise, should be able to make it next weekend. 

May need some help in the flying dept, getting out of the ‘portable hangar” and near the field.

Very pleased to hear Wayne Windsor showed up. I had spoken  to him in the morning. He told me he was planning on going out, glad he did. Wished I could have seen his plane.

Next time Wayne. You do realize Jim Bates will have to “check your flying skills out” before he will “allow onto the runway.

In Al Bleyenberg’s absence, our safety officer commanded me to write a morning report of activities at the CVRC field:

We came, we flew, we crashed. (Well I did anyway!)

Bill Holder got in a lot of stick time with his Commander, flying in SAFE mode down low, but pulling a lot of loops, rolls and upside-down flying up high. He also made a lot of approaches using 1/2 and full flaps, proving just how slowly that bird can fly. He managed a wing drag once, but other than that, no other close-calls.

Jim Bates brought along his “Showtime 50”, a nice looking gas-powered 3D plane. I had a little trouble figuring out what the thing was in his hands though. It looked a little like my portable short-wave radio receiver with it’s crazy-long antenna, and it operated in the 72 mHz band. How quaint! Shades of model flying’s glory days . . . but it flew quite well, even though THE MAN seemed slightly nervous.

Dick brought a sailplane along, and had it in the air very gracefully, but I failed to get the name of the model. Guess I was too busy flying?

Then came Wayne Windsor with his beautiful white scratch built biplane. I was really anxious to see that thing fly, but alas, Wayne had not replaced the velocity stack in the engine after cleaning up the motor at home in preparation for the flight. So sad, but just looking at that thing was a treat. Wayne’s a real craftsman.

One of the “other Al’s” in the club decided to break out his para-glider wing chute, or whatever you call that thing, and wrestle with in in the wind. Apparently you need to do that every so often to avoid problems? Geez, I don’t know, but he got a real workout. I have some video that I’ll put up after editing.

And then there was me. Got the new Parkmaster in the air for 3 batteries worth, and while it flew well, I ended the morning with a semi-soft crash that broke a carbon fiber spar in the landing gear. Nothing I can’t fix fairly easily. I also spent a lot of time wrestling with my “Crack Beaver”, and I’m happy to say no damage in about 12 minutes aloft. Certainly a new record for me. My slowpoke also spent a lot of time in the air, and again, no damage. Happy about all that.

Bill and I left around noon, but we intend to be back at it tomorrow.

Hope you’re felling better, Al!

Lonnie

Well today I got a late start to the field, I actually did not plan to go as I had sent my radio in to get worked on. Funny thing, I figured out it is quite difficult to fly when every time you throttle up your plane goes to the right then when you throttle down it shoots to the left. Anyhow I ordered a cheap 12 channel radio from Hobby King and it was not scheduled to be in till Monday but much to my surprise it came today about 1:00pm so I bound it up to a glider I just finished covering and headed to the field. Steve Tisi also met me there. We got to the field around 2 and the gate was locked and no one was there. We figured first shift left a while before. No worries Steve attempts to put his mini ultra light in the air, and like last week it had a few issues this time it was a bit tail heavy. Steve navigated it back to the ground and we moved around a few things then we threw it and just like last week this thing hit the ground and bounced back into the air unreal how strong this little plane is. Anyhow after a few try’s we got it flying real nice! Sorry no video we are not that technical! Next I threw up my mini twist. This was bound up to the new radio. I could never figure out how to set the expo so it twisted right into the ground. Wow this new radio is super touchy! Can’t wait for my DX-18 to get back! After that I throw the new green glider in the air it is very tail heavy, I did not have instructions so I guessed the CG. I was wrong again. We added the weight we took off of Steve’s plane and an extra battery and it flew much better. However the wings were built very weak so they almost bent in half, when flying I could swear the wing tips touched each other but upon video review they only almost touched each other. See attached pictures! After that we flew my favorite 3D quad and the little global master. It was an awesome day with great weather. We hope to see you guys at the field next time. And sure hope AL gets back soon to do these reviews as I suck at it. Looking to see if the first shift guys have a review, we would sure like to hear from ya. Lol happy flying everyone. 
ThanksBilly west

CVRC 21b Sat. Jan26, 2019

Apologies to Billy West. I forgot to mention his Pitts plane. It’s medium blue with white combo.

The color scheme is like wedge shapes on the wings. Shiny. This plane is BRAND NEW, four years ago. 

Billy finally decided to make it work.

True to Billy’s form, flawless. Puts the battery into it, sets his xmitter to the proper settings, makes the control surface checks, moves away from the runway, fires up the motor, down the runway, and then hoopy doos up and down. Billy has his hands full, plane makes a sharp right still climbing, then banks left level, goes behind the wind sock pole, heads back towards us.

At this time I yell out “hard hat area”, some laugh, Billy doesn’t. As we all watch the Pitts go over our heads, it still is banking left. Billy straightens out the plane, slows it down, and plops it onto the grass, wheels on the ground, all in one piece. APPLAUSE, APPLAUSE.

Putting the Pitts on the stand, everyone comes over to help with a diagnosis. Nearest everyone can figure out, is the CG is wrong. Can’t blame Billy, the CG he used was according to the manual.

Hangar time.

Bottom line, beautiful plane, expert piloting skills, terrific show.

Gents,

I couldn’t make it last Saturday due to being in Asheville. However, when I returned mid-day Sunday, the conditions were decent so I gathered some batteries and my kit-built Flitetest “Simple Cub” and drove over to the field. When I arrived, the wind was out of the SW, varying up and down between 2 and 6MPH on my digital gauge. (An hour later, when I was leaving, it was down to 1-2 MPH.)

The simple cub kit consists of LASER cut paper-backed foam board that is assembled entirely with hot glue. These simple kits take maybe 5 or 6 hours to build, working at old man speed like I do. Then it’s an hour or two more to set up the radio and control surfaces. I used one of the new 6 channel (620) “antenna-less” receivers by Spektrum this time around, because I wanted to experiment with “Flaperons”, which requires each aileron to be on a separate channel. I’ve learned from past experience with these Flitetest kits that with many of their wing designs, it’s tough to find where to set the “zero” point for the Aileron surfaces. With Flaperons, I figured it would be easier to find the relative neutral position for the ailerons that gave the best flight results. (Turns out that it works well for that purpose!)

My first attempts with this plane a month or so ago had resulted in folded-back landing gear as a result of a less than graceful, semi-controlled crash. I fixed that (physical part of the problem) with lots more hot glue and some carbon fiber struts tacked onto the fuse sides with even more hot glue. Inelegant, yes, but as proven today, very effective. From those early flights I also learned that this cub glides like a brick. It needs power all the time, right up until the wheels touch down. Then it likes to try and ground loop and frequently comes to a stop on it’s nose. (Skill related, I’m sure, but landing is a work in progress for me!) I experimented with 3S batteries between 1000-1400mA and I think the 1000’s are best. I’m getting about 7 minutes with those when I’m flying “sanely” at a little above half throttle. I haven’t tried any acrobatics yet.

As for take-offs, like many models, it likes to turn hard left as it leaves the ground, and today, with the highly variable cross-wind, it was pretty interesting. The way I survived today was to not over-react, but also to gain some altitude fairly quickly. I also learned that once your skill improves with a given model, less Expo is better than more Expo. I ended up with 15% on all surfaces, and that seemed to be a good compromise at my skill level. I flew at mid rates (75%) all day.

If you’re interested, there is a hat-cam video at:  https://lonniehagadorn.smugmug.com/Simple-Cub-with-Flaperons/i-XxJsn72/A

Regards,

Lonnie