Saturday 28 August

Wind was the order of the day.... (Whats New?)
However, this did not deter the diehards from flying their planes and heli's.

Fanie managed to select the wrong plane on his TX and was forced to try land his little electric inverted.. Well actually, it just went inverted straight away and hit the deck. Not too much damage though, despite the circumstances. Tony had a battery fail on his little electric, but unfortunatley, that didn't get off as lightly.

The heli's were in full force however, and didn't seem to worry too much about the conditions. Happy to say that the heli's made it through the day without any incident at all! Sorry Wifly.. No spares to be ordered this week!

I myself was getting a little more adventurous with my HK450 and was having a ball.. they really are great little heli's (for the price!) 

Days are getting longer.. Spring is on its way! 
That can only mean one thing.. More flying!

Have a great week guys!

Handing Over

Greetings all!


Time for the handover..... Dirty Sanchez is now living it up in Durbs, so I'll be handling this Blog and reporting back on the flying as and when it happens (Hopefully everyday :) )

Haven't been out in the last few weeks, but I am sure I'll be back in the swing of things in the weekends to come.

Some exciting news firstly ... Wifly.co.za is launching their new site on the 1st of September!
I have been privelaged enough to give my 2c worth on the preview site and my first reaction is WOW! I don't want to say too much, but what I can say is that it now has a much awaited forum where we can discuss those matters technical, airborne discussion, rc banter, build threads etc..

All registered users on Wifly, should receive an email in the next couple of days with a link to the preview so you can also get a taste of whats to come.


Back to the flying.....

I decided to take the Gentle lady out to Jaysons farm 2 weeks ago as she hasn't had air time in quite a while.. Should have done a more adequate preflight though... have a look at the video below!



Anyways.. Signing out for now!

Sat 26 June 2010

Wow. what a nice day. NO WIND at all during the day. pure sunshine. perfect day for thermalling. Fanie and Myself with out old timers were playing with the thermals. bouncing in and out of them. Dennis would have loved it had he been there with his Bird of Time Glider. Shaun flew the crap out of his giles. really goes nicely. I managed to bugger up jasons trex 600 heli when i landed it and was fiddling with the radio to adjust the pitch and the headspeed was too high and it tipped over. felt like a right ass.
also flew my Micro Liadon(available from www.wifly.co.za) what an awesome little plane. zips around the field at quite a speed, and lands literally on a pin.
Was braai day as well and it was well attended even by the ladies. Nice to see them at the field again.
For those who dont know. Ill be moving to DBN on the 1st aug. So ill hand over this site to someone else.

Cheers
Dirty Sanchez

Sat 15 May 2010

Nice day. cant believe there were still clouds around, almost middle of winter. Fanie flew his jet again. performance not as good with the new edf. its also rubbinng against the shroud making a horrible noise.

Sat 1st May 2010

what comes after 2 days of rain? Monday....

So for the past 2 weeks its done little but rain. normally i wouldnt complain but its seriously cutting into my flying time...grrrr

anyway. this weekend come hell or high water i was going flying cos i had my newly built old timer and skyfarer to maiden.

got to the field. cold and miserable already drizlling. but not to be disapointed i set up the old timer and got it ready to go. Fanie hand launched it for me and off it went. a little vibration from the motor and spinner but nothing bone rattling. climb performance is good and the wing loading is incredibly low so itll fly at walking pace basically. Slight warp in the wing casuing it to turn left constantly. With the use of shauns car exhaust we pulled the warp out and it flew just fine afterwards.

as for the skyfarer. well it was another story

Ive got an old OS MAx 25 FP Powering it with a master airscrew 9x6 prop. had serious concerns about it having enough power. Anyway. lined her up for takeoff, she trundled down the runway and bounched into the air with a low but respectable climb rate. flaps helped quite a bit.
she flies like a hunny! stall speed is quite high but thats to be expected

what i DIDNT expect however is for my elevator servo to strip on the second flight. however i did not notice until i wanted to bring it lower and i noticed i had zero tail control. but i noticed that the flaps had brilliant pitch control. they were set on a slider on the side of my radio. so using the slider i managed to bring it back down in 1 piece(luckily) But its a testament to whoever built it that it was absolutely pitch stable in level flight with elevator

needless to say it was quite a laugh in retrospect having to land a aerolpane with no rudder(it does nto have any) and no elevator. can anyone say free flight?

otherwise people pretty much went home early due to the rain. after sitting in the back of fanies bakkie and freezing our butts off we decided to land and go home rather.

Sat 17/04/2010

Good days flying again. Still waiting for my new radio to arrive so I used my HK4 Channel radio to fly the little nieuport 17. halfway into the 2nd flight someone says...hey...will it loop. Dunno i say. lets find out. so i climb up a bit to get some height so i can do a power dive. I put it into a gentle dive and within 2 seconds...CRACK...the bottom left wing is gone, I hadnt even begun to apply elevator to start the loop. the others folded almost immediately. so down it goes. hits the tarmac and sticks straight up out of the ground. Almost comical :) haha. oh well. part of the game hey. Plane is a rightoff but all the electronics etc are ok

Mamemoiselle Build Picture

Here is a pic of the wing I covered for the Mamemoiselle.

Just For Dennis

Dennis. I know youve been looking for a while for plans for a engine which can be made from stock metals and billet

here you go. Looks nice


http://www.myhobbystore.co.uk/product/15578/rc1539--matador-60-60-twin

Cheers
DS

Wow. check this out

http://www.westonuk.co.uk/westonuk2_066.htm

Ramblings from the hangar

Ok so i covered the Mademoiselles wing last night with the burnt orange transparent covering i got from HK and wow! its amazing stuff. a little tricky to seperate the backing from it. but you know what. at 1/3 of the price of its competitors ill stick with it. it irons excelently. shrinks nicely and does not deform or discolour in the slightest unlike solarfilm. its very similar to oracover.

Perhaps this is a good time to talk about covering and the how to's of it. People often tell me they battle to cover their planes. they get warps and wrinkles and it does not stick. well. the most important thing when it comes to covering can be summed up in 1 word. PATIENCE

take your time. do it slowly and evenly and you wont have any problems
for instance. this is how to cover a wing

1.) generally you start on the underside as you dont want the overlap to be on the top.
2.) if the covering is big enough cut a panel big enough for 1 half of the wing, leave 25mm on each side of the wing to compensate for errors and overlap
2a.) To test the temp of the iron(a normal household iron without steam is fine) cut a little covering and place it on the iron face. it should wrinkle and shrivel slightly but should not melt and curl up into a ball.
3.) tack(iron) the covering done in 1 spot about 5mm big on 1 side
4.) now pull it gently to take out the wrinkles and tack it on the opposite side again in a 5mm spot.
5.) now go 90 degrees and tack it again
6.) Keep doing this moving around the wing until you have got a tack spot every 5cm or so. do NOT go in 1 direction as you will get a wrinkle at the end. Go from side to side and across like you would be tightening the wheel nuts on a car wheel or tightening head nuts on a motor.
7.) Once this done the then tack between the gaps and seal it. by doing small tacks around the wing you have eliminated wrinkles
8.) then cut the covering to size allowing for a 6mm overlap. iron it down securely all around
9.) Do the other half of the wing and then the top.
9.) Then take a hair dryer or heat gun(or paint stripper) and gently warm the entire surface, once its warm start concentrating the heat on areas until you start seeing the covering shrink and pull the covering tight. DO NOT Hold the heat gun in one spot too long as you will burn a hole in the covering in no time

For those of you who are curious. the guy with the tarring never came back to us. so no news there. will most likely put another layer of slurry on top of the runway though.

HK Covering

Well i finally received some of my covering so i can start the job of finishing off the mamosoille build. I got a roll of HK Burnt Orange Transparent Covering from Hobbyking(also available from www.wifly.co.za) and i must admit i was sceptical. R170 bucks for 5m of covering whereas locally you can pay up to 300 rand for 2m. anyway, im pleased to report its excellent. has good ironing characteristics and sticks well. does not deform easily and all in all does an excellent job. i will be buying lots more in future.

i tested it on my mamosoiller rudder, and elevator. waiting for my clear transparent covering to arrive now along with my new radio

Sat 10 April 2010

Ok so i sold my broken radio and receivers to dave armitage. Im also selling my Trex 250 with all the upgrades to finance a new radio. let me know if anyone is interested

So i went flying. took my park flyer. did not fly it due to wind. had a smashing day otherwise

Fanie brought out a profile f-22 raptor edf. launched at...WOW what a plane. unlimited verstical. jet like performance. simply awesome. its the one available on wifly for 699. i want one :)

only problem is this. the batt sits up from in front of the motor. Fanie attached it via velcro. Anyway he opened the motor to speed up and we heard THWACK. and we see battery and airplane part ways. the plane flops to the gropund slowly. so slowly you can catch it. no damage. the batt goes flying into the dirt.

pick up the batt. it went through the impeller destroying the impeller and denting the pack badly. pack still works fine though.
plane otherwise ok. Was quite a site to see it flopping to the ground like a parachute

Then i was flying Louis trainer. and it went nuts. turns out the BEC he was using(he is using a 7.4 pack for rx power) went nuts. So it went in bad bad bad. completely destroyed. crashed near the rocky road leading into the field.

what else. oh ya. Flew Lukes heli but he moved his receiver and the wires are now rubbing against the motor. needless to say it stats glitching and eventually goes out of control. still on the ground thankfully so no damage. the motor rubbed through the servo wires and was shorting out. should be fine again once the wires are cut and fixed properly

Henry crashed his big yellow ultra stick due to radio problems. Again with a hitec optic 6 on 35mghz. having alot of interference problems on it lately. Just last week shauns Giles was virtually unflyable due to inteference.

what else. nah thats about it. all good fun otherwise.

@#$#$^% Radio

so the main PCB on my radio is poked. 1300 bucks to replace it. not worth it. so if anyone wants to buy it and repair it, ill let it and the 2 receivers go for a song.

Sat 27/03/2010

Nice day. not a big turnout. Congrats to Ian Saunders on his daughters marriage to Stephan. Had a smashing time with my heli. was hovering inverted and the gear came loose. so it landed upside down. damage not too bad. also dropped my radio and now it no longer works arrggggh....

anyhoo. also flew louis electric pegasus again. only trainer i know that can climb vertically and prop hang!

Incidently the guy who came to give us a quote for the runway never bothered to come back to us. so back to the drawing board.

Better late than never

Hi Guys

Got feedback this morning that the guy for the quote to do the tarring on the runway is coming tomorrow morning to the club at 10:15

anyone who is interested is welcome to come along and give their input etc etc etc have your 2c say :)

Sat 13 march 2010

nice day on sat. not much wind. flew my V2 heli. enjoyed it. did some pylon racing with it. that little heli gets up and moves when it wants to! flew louis converted harvard with electric power now. very nice. only thing is that it burnt the windings on the motor due to too much load caused by a 13x8 prop.its amperage which burns windings. so if you want more power. remember that you can lower the amperage going through the motor by upping the voltage. ie increasing the cell count of the battery you are using.
reminder guys. subs are due. R200 is not much for fees. lets contribute and get the lapa covered!

Mamemoiselle Build

Almost finished. just need to cover it now. cute little electric old timer that i build over the past week.

Sat 27/02/2010

well sat was a nice day all round. no real wind to speak of and the rain Gods were smiling upon us.

Flew my new 450 V2 . Flies nicely. cant notice a difference to the v1 in normal flight and hovering but when it comes to aerobatics. its definitely crisper and more responsive. i suspect due to improved dampers in the head

Flew Louis new Aquila which very much resembles a lancair. very nice model but the nosewheel is a bit short so it jumped off the ground rather unexpectandly and was on the verge of stalling. it also happened to be tail heavy which didnt help. anyway he is going to move the batt pack forward so that will help quite a bit. possible also going to convert it to electric power after seeing how his pegasus trainer performs with the Turnigy motors that wifly supplied him. unlimited vertical on a 13x6 and it will hover on a 12x6. crazy stuff!

Aerial Photo of the Club

From Google Earth

No title

Hey guys. no posts for a little while. been working/away for the last 2 weeks. but im itching to get back into the air. i finished my v2 450 heli this week that i got from wifly. keen to see it fly.