MMAC Free Flight Contest North Branch

Not much time since the free flight Nats in Muncie and I made my way to the Minnesota free flight contest near North Branch Minnesota. I had been there before this year which started out with rain, this contest ended with rain. It was dark and the grass very damp but the wind was light and the temperature cool. More important I had fun and did not lose any airplanes.

Dave Edmonson Launching

To start out with to get quick flights in to check the wind drift I flew my e36 Super Pearl, just like at the Nats it flew really well, I also flew my e20 Sky Demon which quit working after a couple of flights because of the wet grass and the electronics.  

Jetstream  Before Wing Recover

Jetstream in Flight

Tom's Glider

Dave Edmonson was flying his towline when I arrived and had his launcher set up, so I tried my Jetstream towline. The turn seemed to have changed since the Nats and I had trouble getting launched from the launcher in the low wind. Another MMAC member Tom helped me launch and I decided to make some official flights. I had most of the line out but there was a snarl in the reel near the end so did not have it all. The glider towed good but I had to run really fast to keep it going up, it came off the line nice and made some big circles around the field. It did not encounter any lift and was down all three flights in around 43 seconds. I was happy that it launched and did not spiral into the ground.

Wilbur on 200 Turns

Winder Binds at Times

Next I took out my Wilbur rubber model, the one that spent time in the corn at Muncie. Saturday I made some really short test flights from a small field with 100 turns and it required more right turn which I added through rudder. For the first flight on Sunday I used 200 turns, it circled up steep but not stalling and glided with just a hint of a stall. Thought that looked good so tried to make a contest flight with 400 turns. As I launched it went straight up, hung on the prop, slid backwards and tried to recover just as it landed.  I added tip weight for more turn and tried again with the remaining turns and same result. Had trouble with my Stanley winder binding up again too so I put the model away.
I worked on getting a catapult glider in trim to enter a little later. 

Basic Yeller Landing by the Car

Then I decided I wanted to fly my Basic Yeller PeeWee 30 model again because running a glow engine is allowed here. It started pretty easily and I got the fuse lit with my new plasma lighter easily.  It climbed really high, people were impressed. The glide was slow but still has a hint of a stall. On the last flight it landed next to my car, a good thing as it was starting to rain.

It would be good to go to a contest with aircraft that were completely trimmed out, but reality is that closer to me there are no large fields to fly from.  I would like to have more time to talk to people and watch their flying too, I will try harder in the future.

Bill Kuhl
http://www.ideas-inspire.com

Related Blog Posts

http://scienceguyorg.blogspot.com/2017/08/wilbur-rubber-model-at-2017-nats.html
http://scienceguyorg.blogspot.com/2017/01/building-wilbur-nos-rubber-model.html 
http://scienceguyorg.blogspot.com/2017/08/dynomite-jetstream-retro-gnome-and-co2.html
http://scienceguyorg.blogspot.com/2017/08/basic-yeller-peewee-30-free-flight.html
http://scienceguyorg.blogspot.com/2017/04/jetstream-a1-towline-glider-build-report.html