Siloam Springs RC Modelers

Archive for March 8th, 2010

What a wonderful day! It wound up being sunny and warm, and the wind was lower than they’d been forecasting. Yay! We needed a nice flying day.
Mike and I got to the field at 12:30, because he had a new plane to range-check and hopefully maiden. Mike’s been putting this CA Models Epsilon together for a couple of months, and we had run in the new OS 120 about a month ago. We’ve just been waiting on decent weather since then. Mike also had his 60-size Ultra Stick, and he got in one warm-up flight on that, and then it was on to the Epsilon. The range-check went perfectly, so Mike fueled it up and took off. It took a couple of clicks of right aileron, but it flew very well otherwise. Mike got in two flights with that plane, and he had a huge smile on his face the rest of the day
I had my Black Magic and my Abbra, and I got 5 flights in. I managed to hit a mole hill so hard that I ripped the right side of the landing gear out of the Abbra! Arg! Moles!
Many people came out to enjoy the weather: Bill Bergen, Max Freeman, Dave Husher, Bob Stewart, Tony Fox, Ed Jordan, Bill Whitaker, Dan Stelljes, and Mark Labadie. I’ve probably missed someone Oh, Marvin Hexdrix was out, but he didn’t fly. He must have gotten his March flight already? No, this was the first Sunday in March…
Bergen had his 40-sized Stick, and he flew once. Max had his SNJ, and he flew once. Max had Ed Jordan helping, and Ed said they put about 8 clicks of down trim into it throughout the flight. We checked the plane as Max was putting it away, but we didn’t see anything out of the ordinary other than a loose fuel tank. The tank could possibly have moved fore and aft, so it’s possible it was changing the CG. We didn’t see anything else weird, so hopefully that’s it.
Dave had his Fieseler Storch out for show-and-tell, and he has his Edge 540 out for flying. Dave said he and Tony had been preparing the Storch for flight on Saturday and were pretty close.
Tony had his Cherokee, but he had trouble getting it started. I never did see him fly it.
Ed had his Spacewalker, and he flew once of twice. That looks like a nice flying airplane. Ed looks very comfortable with it, which is great to see.
Bill Whitaker has a new electric ducted fan that he maidened. It looked like it flew very nice. It was flat black and a bit difficult to see in the sky, but Bill didn’t seem to have any problems.
Dan Stelljes was out again, and he had his Seagull Models Yak. Saito 91 powered? I forget now. That’s a terrific plane, though. Dan flies it well.
Mark Labadie also had a new plane, a new 60-szed Tiger. Dan helped Mark maiden it, but Mark did a lot of flying once it was trimmed, and Mark brought it in for a nice landing. It’s great to see Mark with another Tiger!
Bob Stewart also had a new plane: a Great Planes Escapade. Bob has an eFlight 46 with a 4-cell Lipo, and it flew very nice. I think Bob flew it 3 or 4 times.
It was a great day of flying with four new planes maidened successfully. Hopefully it’s a good omen for the flying season ahead.