Some RC teaching today...

Here is Mika, a friend of mine, after a successful training flight with my old and trusty Prima electric 2m glider. He tried RC flying for the first time ever. After some sessions where I first took the model up and then he would glide it down to maybe 30 meters- I took it back up-  and again some slow gliding back down- he seemed to make some progress! The wind wanted to bring the model over our heads, but after a while he also learned to cope with that. I then took the model into landing after maybe 15 minutes of flying, and it was already quite late.

Resistance is futile and You will be assimilated to RC flying!

Oh yes, earlier today we raced with 3 RC cars,  a TT Phoenix and my Slash and Lunch Box. The beginning was not promising as I accidentally ran over the small and brittle Phoenix, breaking its front shock tower. Slahs´s steering jammed because of a small piece of dirt and Luch Box´s steering servo somehow lost its screw...anyway we got the fixed!

TP.

and...

The Slash´s weakest point is the unprotected cardan transmission shaft, which I managed to block with gravel in 2 seconds. What followed was some bad words and after some cleaning I put some blue-tack in there to cover the weak areas (sipper clutch nut). Now, after some months of driving the stock tires began to feel too slippery in clay or sand, so today I changed these Proline tires underneath. The Slash feels like a totally different car now, as it tracks like a train and really must be forced to spin-this used to be accidental sometimes.

As the old ones are probably ok for possible winter indoor use, I just put the into the Proline bags to wait. Tomorrow morning I take the cars with me and we go to meet a family with, again, 2 small boys and a RC car! Lets raise some dust...

TP.

Some car stuff now...

Ok, some RC car stuff will follow. I know, they can´t fly except for some short periods, but they´re still interesting! Anyway,  I used to have a Tamiya FAV (Fast attack vehicle) 540-powered car in the 80´s, and a while ago realized that Tamiya´s 80´s cars are still in production! It did not take long until, after 2 hours of fierce assembling in the middle of our living-room, my then 2-and 4-year old sons running circles around me and taking parts with them until I got them back-I got the Lunch Box running.  The expressions of  the three of us could have been worth some photographs as this little monster truck, body still plain white, strafed our small and quiet street. The speed was well below 30 km/h with the stock 540 can motor, but nevertheless, it was fun!

What followed soon, was that my friend living almost next door (also a father of two small boys) followed and got himself a Kyosho Ultima SC 1/10 Short Course truck.  Now that car had decent oil shock dampers and everything! Pretty soon I realized that the Luch Box van is fun but actually terrible to drive! I should have stopped at that point. But. What I soon found in my hands was the Traxxas Slash 4x4 1/10 truck. Now it has a pretty nice stock power system, and generally it is a strong car built with good parts. The Vellineon brushless motor pushes it around 50-60 km/h with a 2s lipo and the stock pinion. So soon the next door childens palyground was featuring a new show called two dads racing with each other and raising sand dust like crazy!

TP.

Welcome to the shop...

Here is the Skunk Works...welcome!

And then...

What happened next was that I glued the broken glider back to one piece and started flying it! Pretty soon a family friend came to me with a nicely built Blue Phoenix 2 m glider that was also coloured nicely, orange wing and black fuse. This model was then flown a lot! Really a fantastic model, maybe a bit silly wing mounting system and too small rudder, but other than that, great. Very similar to Gentle Lady.

Years later I' m now sharing my really small 2x2 model room with about 10 models, of which 3 are F5D pylon models and 2 are jets.
This summer I've logged 59 flights with the Boomerang Elan, 3 with the F-104 Starfighter and about 50 with the rest. I was planning to participate the F5D WC in Muncie, but had to give it up because of family and economical reasons. Instead of the Muncie I flew the Elan in 2 big airshows.
TP.

More history

When we collected the glider pieces from the woods, I sensed how humiliated my father was.
I also remember one case where I had flown a free flight glider "Toka" into a very tall tree. My father helped it down despite having a painful back because of falling from the ladder.
Me and my older neighbour flew control line models at the nearby hill until the neighbour lost his one day. The O.S.15- powered Viuhu model flew as normal until somehow the handle was removed from his hand. The model flew big circles, the handle about 1 meter circle and as the fuel tank was almost full, the model just climbed and climbed until we saw it no more. It was never found.

One day at the same hill ( which is now full of ligting poles) I saw this bloke flying a RC glider with a bungee. It did not look too difficult, and soon he let me try it. First in the air for a short time, and then eventually into a complete flight. Stall and overspeed, thats really it!

Some background

Let me give some background info regarding my hobby. My father used to be a keen control- line flyer and flew pretty much all of them: speed, team racing and stunt. So my first contact to model airplanes were control line models. If I remember correctly I flew a model with a Cox Baby Bee in the nose at the age of 5 or 6. The flight did not last long...
On we went then, and on my 10 th birthday I found a Cox 09 Medallion in my hands. This engine was huuuge!!!
It flew some control line models then, one was named "
Ugli" as it was not the most streamlined one!

Then my father wrote an article to a local model magazine about a japanese RC glider called Young Star. It was dense styrofoam (1981 or so) and equipped witha Futaba 2 ch radio system. He had never flown a RC model, so as we tossed the huge 1200 mm span glider down the nearby hill, down it went into the woods and... well..re- kitted.

Welcome to my RC blog!

This is my first blog posting ever. In this blog I will tell about my RC hobby, that is sometimes getting a bit out of hands. What I mostly do, is build and fly RC model airplanes varying from indoor models to turbine jets. There are also 2 RC cars in the shed, and an old sailing yacht. Oh yes, also there is the electric boat a friend kindly lent me (I really should return it by now...)

Anyway, I am starting to complete an old 1/5 MIG-15 UTI to flying condition. The next blog entry will probably be MIG- related. Until then, TP.