Finally after all the days of rain, snow, wind and cold, I finally had a day off when it was nice weather. The weather is clear, about 45 deg, about 6 mph winds. Their calling for a high of almost 60. 10:00 am I hit the field, the truck is loaded. Inside the cab is 4 transmitters, in the back a total of 8 planes. Some just fun stuff including a Slow Stick, little electric profile Edge, my little EPP glider,and even an Airhogs Storm launcher. LOL The glow planes were represented by a 3 ch trainer I'm trying to get ready, my combat wing and a 1/4 scale clipped wing Cub. To round out the collection was my 30% Yak.
My flying buddy meets me at the field with a couple of electrics. Let the fun begin.
I start out with the slow stick. The wind is just right so that you can fly stationary for quite a while. Fly out the battery and decide to fly the little Edge. DOH! I end up dumb thumbing it and do just enough damage that I will have to strip the covering off the fuse to repair it. I then fly the combat wing. Flying great, Get a couple of flights on it and decide to fly the trainer. Fire it up, the new muffler I made works great. Nice take off, I get about three passes around the field I put it through it's paces, flying well, I get out a little farther with it and the receiver fails. It rolls inverted and hits about a 60 degree angle at full throttle. The damage - blew out the bottom of the fuse including the gear plate. Looks to be about an hour repair.
Time to go big. I pull out the Cub, get it ready to fly. I work for 20 minutes trying to get it to start, nothing, I only got it to pop twice. Enough of this chit. Out comes the Yak. Fuel it, quick range test. Five flips with choke on, pops, three more with choke off and the DA fiddy is purring. Taxi out, throttle up, tail wheel comes up, a little elevator and the Yak is air born for the first time since New Years day. Point the nose straight up three rolls on the vertical. It's a great day to be alive, this is what it is all about. I put about 12 min on the Yak, snaps, rolls, point rolls, reverse cuban 8, stall turns, a couple loops, a couple high hovers, time for a few low passes to get set up for landing, grease the landing. I decide that the landing was nice enough that I had to do it again. I taxi back to the down wind end and up she goes again. I do a couple more passes and grease another landing.
Refueled the Yak and fired it up again. I noticed something isn't right. Shut it down and check it out. I find that the engine mounting bolts have come loose. I go to pull the cowl off and the t-nuts on two of the cowl bolts are just rotating in the fuse. No way to get to the t-nuts so I have to put the yak up.
Get the combat wing out again, doing some low passes, end up skipping it through the corn field.
I end up the day with one last flight on the Slow Stick.
Total for the day. 6 hours of pure pleasure. Two planes with crash damage to be repaired, one plane with a broken prop, one that wouldn't start (time for a gas engine on it). One gasser that will take a couple of hours to re-bolt the engine and cure the t-nut problem. 4 transmitters to charge, 5 li-pollys to charge, 2 ni-cad flight packs to charge, 2 li-ion packs to charge. If all goes well everything will be cured (with the exception of changing the cub over to gasser) by morning. Tomorrow is supposed to be another nice day, and I have the day off again.
