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Sunday's Flying

Pilot (me, dangit) takes off with no clear flight plan and much too close to the pits. The airplane gets "redirected" by a small gust, I take evasive action while flying slow and climbing, the plane stalls the left wing and does exactly 1/2 turn of spin into August-hard ground from about 10 feet up.

This is what it used to look like:

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Now it looks pretty much the same from the leading edge back, but the front of the fuselage is pulverized and the gearbox appears to be toast.

This was an airplane that I scratch-built 4 or 5 years ago with exactly one real crash before this one. While the empenage and wing will probably fly again the fuselage will most likely be gracing the trash in a little bit.

The second-most frustrating part is not having an aircraft to fly. The really frustrating part is that I have never been able to spin that airplane intentionally -- I think I'm just too conditioned to avoid a hard stall like that.

Ah well, time to work on the backup airplane...

Reply to
Tim Wescott
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don't give up on the plane yet, My favorite plane still has the original wing, but the fuselage from the TRAILING edge of the wing forward is all new, Just because the nose is gone, no need to give up on the rest ;-)

bob

Reply to
Bob Cowell

Well take solace in knowing it was a fine looking model, nice lines. Fine looking little guy holding it also. Future pilot?

Red S.

Reply to
Red Scholefield

I could repair it but I was kinda dissatisfied with it anyway. It was built from a set of 1937 free-flight plans (Ben Sershaw "Cadet", from a "Flying Models" reprint of the "Flying Aces" article); when I did it I reduced the absurdly high dihedral by a factor of 2. While the resulting dihedral has worked well for me on other models it too shallow for this one. With all of the side area behind the center of gravity plus the low dihedral it had a slow divergence into a spiral dive, just like the aerodynamic books say. While it was fun to steer around the sky close in (I've circled the field inverted on three channels) it wasn't a nice relaxing "speck in the sky" flyer as I originally intended.

So if I rebuild I need to rip up the wing center section and give it more dihedral, I need to put in ailerons, or I need to build a fuselage thats more Cessna-like with significantly less area behind the wing (may have lower drag that way, too).

If I ever build another one I'll put in 3/4 of the dihedral called out in the plans instead of 1/2, and I'll build the wingtips to taper upwards instead of down. Or maybe I'll hinge the dang wings at the center section and play with it until it's right....

Reply to
Tim Wescott

Yes. He's 12 now (that picture was taken right after the paint dried). He does well on the flight simulator and flying the "real thing". Is only problem is self-image -- he's not as smooth as me, so he thinks he's terrible. He's accepting the fact that I've been at this for nearly 20 years so _maybe_ he'll get to be as good if he practices. I've got an old Carl Goldberg Eaglet earmarked for him; I've got to get a Nobler (a real one, not an ARF or RC) off the bench and in the air, then I'll start the Eaglet.

As a st> Well take solace in knowing it was a fine looking model, nice lines. Fine

Reply to
Tim Wescott

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