I had a few spare moments today, so I went out and flew my newly finished scratchbuilt RCM Basic Trainer, which is a .25 powered high winger with Clark-Y type airfoil. I set it up with lots of throw on the ailerons and elevator. It's a really great airplane, but the place I was flying made me nervous. I live in a rural area a few miles outside Springfield Missouri, which is good, but the fields around here are really rough and/or covered with tall grass, which is bad. I've had my eye on a new commercial real estate development of about 60 acres or so. It has streets and lamp posts but no buildings yet, and it's totally deserted after 3 pm and all day on weekends, and there are no neighbors. (Go ahead and tell me I should join an AMA club and not fly at unfinished subdivisions. I'm listening.)
The plane trimmed and flew great. It's a really nifty little plane that kind of reminds me of Fred Reese's Simple Citabria. Landing was a bit of a challenge. Those streets are very narrow, with killer curbs. The lamp posts don't look bad, until you have a plane in the air. Then they suddenly turn very menacing. I managed to get the plane down without incident by ungracefully plopping it from about a foot up. At least I didn't hit anything. I had forgotten how much I don't like flying in unfinished subdivisions....
The best part of the outing was when I went down to the big drainage pond. I always thought it looked promising from the car, but that's about as far as it went. Well, I walked down to the water's edge this time, and it's perfect. The surrounding land is about 8 feet above the water level, with about 20 feet or so of bank all around. The pond itself is several hundred feet long and a couple hundred wide. There are no trees or any other obstructions anywhere near it, and the low elevation of the pond makes for gentle wind conditions on the water surface.
Of course I came home and immediately dug out my balsa float plans. If I get some time to build them I should be able to try it out within a couple of weeks. I've done a little bit of float flying in the past, and it was a ton of fun. I always wanted to do more, but it's just so hard to find an accessible pond in Missouri that doesn't have trees around it. We're planning to move again in a few months, so I need to take this opportunity while I have it.