It Flew Great Back Home – Nats 2018

Last week was my third Free Flight Nats contest in Muncie Indiana; for the most part weather was good, I learned a great deal, and had a fantastic time. I came home with all the planes I brought but some repairs are needed on a couple of the planes. On arriving late Saturday afternoon in rainy weather, I still went out to the field and flew my Super Pearl e36 between rain showers, there was one other plane flying. Sunday is the day many people use for testing before the start of the contest on Monday; I spent the morning flying non-stop and did more observing in the afternoon as the wind increased. My ½ A Streak for One-Design had been flown on small field back home but only the last time out did I feel it was close to trimmed. The flights on Sunday morning looked good, with no sign of trying to loop as it had back home. 

1/2 A Streak

Saturday Evening Flying

In the afternoon I flew my Blue Ridge Special with DT a few times just for fun. The last flight it went a little further and I had a heck of time finding it in the grass. Thought I had a good line on it and so did someone else but it seems that the smaller models such as e20 or this model with 14” wingspan disappear easily in the longer grass. Luckily someone on a motorcycle found it for me; I put it away after that.

Bob with electric Satellite

The rest of the day I was observing Bob fly his e36 Satellite and Craig fly his Big Dog electric. Bob had a very nice looking e36 Satellite that was giving him fits to adjust but had flown well back home. I took video of the second short test flight and the model rolled inverted and crashed, damage was extensive.

Craig with Big Dog Electric

Craig had this well-built larger electric model that just didn’t want to transition properly, it starts on a nice right climb, then straightens out which cause it to stall after the motor cut. At this point it would either dive or do a tail slide.  Larry, Bob, and Jim, a combination of many years of free flight experience had Craig try all sorts of adjustments to thrust, rudder, etc. and it was not helping. After an adjustment had been put in it would be taken out and another adjustment tried. It did get better and I understand it did get sorted before contest flying but was destroyed after hitting something on the field.

Eureka E36

I flew my Eureka e36 many times but was noticing the trim change also. The wing mount appeared to be loose but after fixing it the issue appeared again. After making one official flight, it spiraled in to the right and broke the fuselage. Not an extensive repair needed but I am going to recover the wing with Polyspan Lite. I would have done this before but was running out of time before the contest. With no diagonal structure in the wing, I can image there can be flexing going on when tissue gets loose. I remember last year after a crash from a bad launch of my E36 Starduster the repaired wing would do funny things as the motor run was increased.  The ½ A Streak I covered with Polyspan Lite appeared to stay in trim well. It is not much more work, just that multiple coats of color and dope are needed.

 Just for fun I flew my Flying Aces Moth and it worked well but went back to old habit of crashing to the right, more fuselage repair is needed.

 Paul had a really squirrely flight with a very well built embryo model, it had flown great the day before. We have been discussing ideas of what differences were between the flying on two different days.

In conclusion, free flight can be even more challenging than I had thought. I learned much but also realize there is way more I do not know.  With the air conditions a big part of flight duration, even the experts have bad flights on occasion. 

Bill Kuhl

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