In November I spent 12 hours rebuilding my old Dave's Aircraft Works 1:26 foamie glider. It had been sitting broken in my basement for 10 years (Here). Since then I've flown it twice. December was cold and January wasn't very windy. Yesterday the conditions were perfect. The wind was so strong I needed to add some ballast to get good penetration. I set up the glider with the center of gravity as far aft as possible. An aft CG is more efficient because there is less tail-down force for the main wing to overcome allowing more of the wing's total lift to act as lift. The trade off is that it spins immediately with no warning. Adding the Hero Cam as ballast only aggravated my set up. I should have moved the mount a 1/4" forward. The great thing about RC's is that you can do everything that is too dangerous or illegal in a real aircraft. Catching it on the Hero Cam was pretty cool.
I launched the glider, gained some altitude and turned downwind to dive bomb Molly on a high speed pass. In the turn I pitched a little too aggressively and entered an accelerated stall. It immediately broke into a spin. I recovered in one turn, but was too low to pull out of it. The impact ripped the covering off the wings and killed the receiver. It came to rest facing me so you can see me running up to inspect the damage. Classic!
It might be another 10 years before I motivate to rebuild it!
1 comment:
it better be 10 days...we got bigger peaks to break our planes on this spring. nice footage...you'd never know you were a real pilot...ouch! you always have the m-coupe as a hobby...talk soon alex. -patrick
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