Father & Son Solo Flight

My 13 year old and I had the benefit of some earlier buddy box training and were OK to fly solo in calm conditions. My work schedule kept us from regular flying but we took our Sig LT-40 up to the field the other day and wound up completing our first unsupervised solos.

Pictures and text document the day at:

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Reply to
PipeMajor
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Congratulations, great report.

I only counted 6 rubber bands. I hope you use that by the time the boy starts wringing it out.

Red S.

Reply to
Red Scholefield

Correction: add MORE THAN

Reply to
Red Scholefield

Truth is, we've never flown this (we did flights 13 & 14 that day) with fewer than 12 rubber bands. Some of the rubber bands are overlapped.

We saw someone else's LT-40 ARF shed it's wing once. Wasn't a pretty sight. The wing survived as it just fluttered down like a leaf to the ground. The fuselage - well, it was buried back to the firewall. That's when I learned how the ARF was constructed differently than our kit built version.

Reply to
PipeMajor

Congratulations! Great job on the beautiful LT40 - It seems that you did everything right and were rewarded with success.

Reply to
Ed Forsythe

Congratulations and welcome to the world of RC fun.

Reply to
Philip Goodwin

Good on ya! You done it all right. Obviously the picture I looked at was only part way through the banding. You have demonstrated that there is something rather special about a kit you build vs the same thing as an ARF. Few people today know the satisfaction of doing a quality building job and the rewards it brings. No way to explain it.

Reply to
Red Scholefield

BTW, I really appreciate your battery clinics. I've built & flown C/L since I was a kid. Also built & flew an escapement powered single channel Sterling Minnie Mambo (lasted about 2 flights & was crashed by my instructor) so building isn't new to me.

Battery science *is* new and was somewhat daunting. Understand it much better now, thanks!

Reply to
PipeMajor

By definition, you certainly an R/C pioneer. You got two fights on the mini-mombo . . . . probably better than the average. I didn't know we had instructors back then, maybe a few people that had gotten three flights before crashing. :-)

Thanks for the "flowers" on the battery clinic. I enjoy being able to help out in that area.

Red S.

Reply to
Red Scholefield

Great job and so well documented , beautiful pics. Welcome to the world of RC . It's great to see a Father and Son doing it together. My son started flying with me when he was 10 , was my flying field companion a number of years before he started flying. That was 19 years ago. Unfortunately , he moved away 4 years ago. He still flies and I still miss him..... always will. Thanks for sharing with us. Brings back some of the best memories of my entire life.

Ken Day

Reply to
Ken Day

Very nice! I'm slowly building up and on PT-20 trainer with my 8 year old. He laid up the wing panels pretty much on his own last weekend and I showed him how to glue 'em up on one panel and he did the other. Very nice job on his part and I'm amazed how he takes his time to get it right. He's impatient to fly the thing but we're making progress every weekend.

I wish my dad had helped me when I got into the whole RC thing... I've also got my boy on G2 and he's making progress.. I'm hoping by the time we get this thing finished, I can get him on the buddy box and let him have some "real" stick time.

Reply to
The OTHER Kevin in San Diego

I use 8 x #64 on my Seagull Boomerang 40 (40LA turning 12000rpm). Last weekend full throttle dives (not vertical) from 300ft didn't yield a broken rubber band....and they were all on thier 3rd weekend of flying (6hours at least).

However in those dives I did discover the plane started to oscillate at full speed with later inspection showing a cracking horizontal and vertical stab. Having said that, the plane has over 100hours of flight including everything from initial learning (with various hard landings), crashed through a tree at 50ft height, through various basic aerobatics including cubans, inverted flight, split S, fast rolls etc. Not bad for a trainer and that Kadet looks similar in construction.

Maybe US rubber bands are weaker (now there's some dangling bait) but if I used good old Australian rubber bands 12 would snap those wing dowels without a problem :-)

Reply to
The Raven

I have some GREAT memories of my oldest daughter and I going to fly. I was into R/C parachute jumpers and she became quite good at "spot landing" that little dude.

My daughter got married last Friday to a jet jock in the Air Force. "Jr" is taking my baby away in February to some base far away : (.

Remember the time you spend with him, one day, he will grow up and not be so accessible...

CJ

Reply to
CJ

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