27 March, 2015

9 Trouble Free Flights


I had the Harmon Rocket out today for 3 flights, what a great flyer it is with a nice throaty four stroke engine. Also had 3 flights with the Mini Pred helicopter without crashing it and 3 flights with the little Tiger Moth in the calm late afternoon. I was at the field for 3 hours and I didn't check but I think the wind was probably 3 miles per hour!

All good things must come in threes then!

21 March, 2015

GWS Tiger Moth Maiden Day

Last year my daughter bought a GWS Tiger Moth for my birthday. It was quite a surprise especially since really it's the indoor model and I don't care for indoor flying. So it lanquished on a shelf for the rest of the year but recently I decided to assemble it, fitting a lighter lithium polymer battery pack than the heavier NiCad pack it was designed for. I also used the now commonplace 2.4Ghz radio system which also meant that I could fit a lightweight receiver. All these hopefully giving it chance to fly outdoors on calm days.

A couple of weeks ago such a calm day arrived so I decided to give it a try. The wheels are pretty flimsy so it would struggle to take off from grass (so I thought but I have done so since). There was no one on about that had hand launched a model before so I decided to try it off a tarpaulin sheet, that worked a treat. I wish I had remembered to ask someone to video the maiden flight which revealed a huge amount of yaw to the right, too much to correct with rudder trim so I had to hold the correction in on the transmitter throughout the flight. Amazingly it flew quite well, so well that I was able to land it back on the tarpaulin which annoyingly I couldn't repeat for the second flight in the video below.



By the time of the next visit to the field I had remounted the motor with more left sidethrust and it flew a straight without any yaw on another clam day. I flew it again yesterday when there was a light breeze and it coped though I would say it was on it's limit. All the same calm summer and autumn evenings may well see this dainty little aeroplane floating around.