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| Fresh from the factory! |
In my first post on the RCM&E 2013 Mass Build titled "Two Tucanos" I reported that I would be building two and that the slope version would be finished first, well....
A variety of events slowed down even getting started in the first place, the Catalina being one of them but the were others too. The result was that I ran out of time to get both of them finished in time for the RCM&E/Greenacres 2013 Summer Fly-in and had to put the slope version on the back burner.
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| Photo Chris Bott at www.modelflying.co.uk |
I had the IC version ready enough to test fly with only a few days to spare and prepared for the maiden flight, which didn't take too long because the engine mount came loose and that put a stop to everything. So in the end I did take it to Greenacres for static display but not to fly. At that point there were no stripes on it, no charging socket, no remote glow connection and the engine hadn't been run. As the first photo in the post shows the IC Tucano is now finished and it has flown an number of times. The inverted engine is taking a while to settle down so I'm going to try a special glow plug for 3D and inverted engines, hopefully that will sort it out.
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| Photo Chris Bott at www.modelflying.co.uk |
As it turned out the weather at Greenacres was not good. The average wind speed didn't drop below 17mph all weekend and at times it was gusting a lot more. All the same I did fly on both days, not the Tucano obviously but my old faithful Sportster. Hardly an ideal candidate for the Saturday conditions but since I had telemetry on board I knew that it could fly at 45mph on the level, leaving a few mph to spare above the worst gusts of 38mph! It handled the conditions amazingly well; well actually yes it was blown around a bit but by restricting it to sensible flying for the conditions it was okay. The Sunday was pretty wet but flying conditions were better and some mild aerobatics were possible.
