Slope jumping

WY calls it post mid-air therapy. Something we have been thinking of doing, something we wanted to do for awhile. Just do it. Enjoy the vid.

Great flight , bad crash

Had the best flight yet on the discus today, sad thing is it had a mid air crash on the same flight. Dam, feel dam wasted. Now i know how WY felt.

It was the first flight of the day for the discus. I finally got a hang of her flying characteristics and got her trimmed properly, my aim on that flight was to do rolls like those in the videos. Was not confident enough yet so had to bring her up high to do it.

After circling the slope for a few rounds, founds some thermals and up she went. Went up to specked out height, brought her down a bit n started trying out the rolls. The first fews were barrel rolls, after a few tries she did some nice axial ones. The roll rate was hell of slow but it looked great for a scale ship doing rolls.

Came down lower to the slope, since not much planes were flying today, i got much space for some dives and low passes. Wow the molded wings sounded dam sweet as she dives by. With confidence gained, i put her through rolls at the end of those aggressive dives, banana-style. Superbly fun and exciting.

Then the fateful happened, i had enough fun and wanted to land so shouted for landing, it was coming in fast n i had to abort, next i know it collided mid air with my friend's epp glider , a JW54. Man my heart sank as i watch her drop from the sky. His wings hit the vertical tail of the discus at quite a fast speed. The horizontal stab and rudder post broke, canopy and fuse cracked.
Had no idea why he was flying nearby cos normally we keep clear whenever anyone shouted landing, he tried to avoid ,but it happened too fast. I don't blame him, it was unintentional ,things like this happen, especially at the slope. Just feel wasted that it had to happen when im just beginning to have some fun. Haiz. No more mood to fly after that. Think thats it for the season.

Ok enough of whining, got to SUMO (Shut Up and Move On). No regrets as i had done what i set out to do, loops, rolls, dives on the discus. Have already emailed for the replacement parts, she will rest now till the next season.

Slope vids

Wind is kinda sucky these few days of holidays. Its either raining or cloudy with the wind direction blowing from all over the place Think season going to end pretty soon, prob 1 or 2 more weeks. Another short season. Oh well we had our fun while we could. Here's some slope vids.


Banana Screams



4.2m ASK-21 launch

Sailplane Fun Fly-in 11 Feb

Today's weather was great, thermals plentiful. Specked out the elster in my warm up flight. After that took out the nana for a spin. She simply rocks with the high pitch shriek sound she made on rolls after the huge dives. The rest of the crowd were enjoying it too, so much so that she won the pilot choice award at the fly-in organised by Aerosmith hobby. Thanks for the medal and kudos to them for the effort in setting up the freq board and providing drinks. Some more pics here.

Ripe nana

The banana was completed and she flew superbly. Previously had finished the wings, the fuselage takes abit more planning and more work to complete. From the long banana thread at RCGroups, seems that the V-tail requires a few degree of shimming. Measuring the V-tail incidence is abit tricky and i only had one incidence meter with me. So what i did was use the meter, set the wing such that the incidence is zero and use this as reference point. Secure the whole plane before setting the Vtail up. Vtail is using heli ball links.
The fuselage was dremelled open and 1 cm ply wood strips was used to secure the servos. Space is really tight, had to use the berg 7 rx to save some space. Added about 60grams of lead in the nose.Madien flight was great, only needed a few clicks of up trim. She was cutting through the wind like hot knife through butter and was ripping up the skies with rolls, loops, cubans. Fast, agile, superb energy retention and insane roll rate. The yellow skin really made her stood out in the blue sky.

Due to her thin profile,several times when she flew towards me, she became one thin line and disappear momentously. Scared me a few times. Landings are hot, have to learn to slow her down more. Also she doesnt quite make the sssshuiiii sound on dives but makes a nice high shriek one when doing fast rolls at the end of dives. Definitely much more fun factor than the discus.Today was only a small group of us at the slope although season is on full now. The numbers are just nice and cozy, we all knew each other so had lots of fun combating, playing 'hit the bottle' and just chit chatting. End of the day, as i was packing up, the smu prof came with his gentle lady. He always arrive towards the end of the evenings when most pple have gone back. I have seen him fly this gentle lady since 2 years back, and i can see he is contented with what he has and is still having lots of fun with it. Got to learn to be like him...

Slope pics 3rd Feb weekend

Rain is finally gone. Weather was fairly cloudy, it eventually cleared up. The wind strength was good, but its still shifting left, on and off. Fairly good day at slope with as many as 10 over planes in the air at one time.

Discus repaired and flew today, gave it a nice smoke coat on the canopy. Pics below includes spider2m, tt ehawk1400, tt ehawk2k mod, 4.2 m ASK21, skylark 6, audry (talon), among others.

The 4.2m ASK21 is simply awesome, the biggest plane there today. It just hangs in the air looking so stable as if the winds has no effect at all. One flight on this is enough to make the day... Some more to come tomorrow.
Sunday was similar weather to sat. Cloudy skies clear after one round of small drizzle. Fantastic wind after the rain, blowing directly perpendicular to the slope for fairly long periods. The huge lift column created gave the flyers much airspace to maneuver their planes higher up. Lots of thermal as well.Besides the numerous DG1Ks, there is the huge classic Ka6e and the lovely bird of time. Most of us were enjoying ourselves just by watching them fly...