13th of April 2013

Despite a variable crosswind, the conditions at the farm were again amazingly good considering the weather during the week.

Thanks to Greg Gilboy for very kindly loaning me a decent digital SLR camera for club use - for the first time ever in the CMAC newsletter we have photos of planes actually flying!

Greg Wood resurrected an old classic that hadn't flown for four years, an OS 200 powered Yak 54.

After adding some additional weight up front she was soon carving up the sky!

Now in the air - what a classic!

We had the Pete 'n Pokes out again, this time with more success at flying them together since mine actually stayed in the air!

Graeme had the PC-9 out for a run.

Michael with his Katana.

James' Falcon.

Dennis' Sopwith Camel with Greg demonstating the approved take-off method for a crosswind!

The boys working hard out at the field!

Apologies that many of the photos are grainy due to cropping, but with some experimentation with settings I think we'll get some really good results before too long.

Next week has been designated biplane week, but we will also have the maiden of Anthony's 50cc Trojan which is ready to go!

See you next week.

Cheers, Rob

6th of April 2013 - Pete 'n Poke Day!

The thing I love about our club is the dedication to our chosen sport........

On a day where it had only stopped raining for a total of 15 minutes, the forecast was for more rain & strong winds, & the weather to the south looked even worse than the weather to the north, seven hardy souls ventured out to the farm for a fly!

Amazingly, as is so often the case, the sky cleared & we had perfect flying conditions all afternoon....

There won't be much in this report that isn't about the PnP's so apologies in advance!

So here we go with the photos:

So, we had individual successful maidens (after we sorted a slight radio aileron/rudder mixing issue on mine) & then it was time to get them both in the air.

Now of course if I didn't have bad luck at the field I wouldn't have any luck at all would I?

Everything was going well until I seemed to develop some throttle trouble, which then extended to elevator trouble, with the result being a crash over near the creek!

Incredibly the damage was only fairly minor & will be easily repaired; a miracle considering that it hit a tree & then almost landed in the water!

Here's the post crash recovery team conducting the investigation.

The cause was two dead servos - throttle & elevator!

Online research this morning indicates that this is a known issue with Hitec 325HB servos & they have brought down a few aircraft in their time!

I wish I'd known!

Time to upgrade to some heavy duty digital servos I think....

I didn't really get photos at the field but here's the damaged areas - I don't think an ARF would have stood up so well!

Oh well, still a successful day from the point of view that we did get both PnP's in the air, even if it was only for a short time.

Greg put on a nice aero display with his which only inspired me to get mine repaired quickly!

The only other photos I got were of Barry's awesome foamie ME-262 which flew very nicely.

Greg & Bill (Fraser) managed to have a mid-air collision which resulted in Bill's glider coming down in the cane, but it didn't really damage Greg's MX2 apart from a graze on the wing tip.

Also out was Dennis, who landed his jet just like he used to with a perfect greaser, Curtis, who forgot his transmitter but importantly not the beer, Paul who pit crewed to perfection, James, who flew the Fly Baby & the Edge & of course Greg & I.

To wrap it all up with a positive, apart from the two successful flights with the MXS-R I had, & a perfect landing, check out the rainbow at the end of the day!

See you next week.

Cheers, Rob

30th of March 2013

The rain on Friday cleared away nicely to give us pefect flying conditions for Saturday.....well it seemed perfect until a few things started to go wrong, but more on that later.........

Strap yourself in for a bumper Easter Saturday Edition of the newsletter!

Here's a few shots of our standard setup along with safety barriers & pilot's box.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

 

We had a few maidens on the day starting with Ian's 50cc Extra 300.

 



With a canister muffle onboard she sounded sweet & flew really well!

I had my new 30cc Dolphin Co Matt Hall MXS-R with strengthened wing joiner, also running a canister muffler system

The maiden didn't go exactly to plan, with the discovery that the CoG in the manual was way off, meaning that she was super tail heavy & pretty much unflyable!

Thanks to Paul who grabbed the transmitter from my frozen hands & somehow landed her in one piece despite having almost no aileron or elevator control!

After adding approx 350 grams to the nose it was a totally different aircraft & flew like a dream!

We also had the maiden of James' new jet Falcon which had some very neat wiring & plumbing on display along with very nice overall presentation.

Couldn't miss the opportunity to photograph the three Falcons together being James', Dennis' & Bill's (Fingers).

Unfortunately all three of them left with damaged landing gear, either due to hot landings & wheel bounce, or in Bill's case a low level dead stick. (No major damage to any of them).

Barry came out for another visit & this time brought out a self-designed, scratch built 30cc craft that seemed to fly with a little help from above!

 Now onto the gory stuff!

Anthony & Curtis had a mid-air collision that resulted in the death of both the electrics they were flying (Domin-8-Trix & Extra 300) as well as starting a fire!

Luckily the Safety Officer was on hand to rush out to the flaming aircraft with his hat to try to beat those flames out! (It was James with his fire extinguisher that actually killed the flames but Paul tried hard with that hat)!

Then finally, to add insult to injury, Anthony suffered a receiver battery failure which resulted in the destruction of his MXS-R Matty Hall .........I know the feeling only too well!

A day of highs & lows but that's what we've come to expect at the farm on a Saturday afternoon!

Hopefully next week will see the double Pete 'n Poke maiden for Greg Wood & myself as they're both ready to go! (Mine's the blue scheme).

See you next week!

Cheers, Rob