Dark Skies

On Tuesday Ralph and I headed up to the Bowl on the Mount for a spot of ESE @ 15kts. I had the trusty Karwai and after a short flight with only soft lift we decided it wasn't going to be a great afternoon's flying.

It seems that when the temperature is down, the air would rather wrap sideways around the slope than go up and provide lift. So as an alternative we decided to forge a track further round to "Ralph's Rock" a spot he had been to before in easterly conditions. It overlooks the Hot Pools complex but is pretty rugged going to get here.

After much bush-bashing we did make it to the rock and I had a little fly. But conditions were pretty marginal so I tried a very poor landing attempt across the top of the scrub that meant a tortuous rescue attempt to retrieve the plane. As we were getting short on daylight we hurried back through the bush, but it just got darker and darker. Here's a pic I took of the streetlights coming on in the town.


We had a bit of trouble locating our exit point in the darkness and were also under attack from some nocturnal birds (bats?) that were making strange squawk noises. They were dive-bombing us all the way back to the top of the Bowl where we gathered our breath in the darkness. This pic shows just how dark it was and that was only 6pm. Phew, what a way to stay in trim!

No Flying

Not a lot to report this last week - the weather has been so cold I haven't left the heater. Also been did a trip out of town which cut down on flying time available.

So in the absence of a flight report, I thought you might like to see a little more progress on my Su27 Flanker project. Spent most of my time agonising over construction details. As with all prototyping I guess it's worth making sure all the components are going to work together and are carefully packaged to optimise the design.

As you can see from the pics below, I am building the fuselage in two parts, with the wing going thru both. This made it easier to have the long skinny nose (to aid knife edge flight) without having to carve a mountain of foam from one block.

Anyway, here's the progress pics. Next step is adding some spars to the fuse for strength and shaping the wing roots.

Until next time - stay in trim!

CAP over Mt Maunganui

On Thursday I ventured up the Mount with the trusty old Vampire to fly combat air patrol over the coastline. Weather was cold with 15kts WSW forecast and was a bit light when I reached the top but also the big rain squall was moving down the harbour heading towards me. Here's a pic I took of it.

I took shelter under the trees and was chatting to a Polish couple who are now living in Glenorchy (spelt?) in the South Island. Very interesting people - also met a chap from Quebec out here on holiday. The Mount has always got tourists up there enjoying the views.

After the rain passed i was able to get in some flying time - not great conditions - very cold air meant there wasn't as much lift as you'd expect from the windspeed. I was constantly hunting on the elevator trim and struggled to make height for a while.

As 3pm was looming up (had to work at 6pm) decided it was landing time. Tested out the airbrakes up high - not to bad, just a little too much down elevator in the mix still, and brought it in to land into wind along the top after only two passes. What I thought was going to be a perfect landing was ruined by coming down on top of a sharp rock which tore all the underside of the fuselage. Bugger :-(  It's very differcult to watch your plane AND your projected landing zone at the same time. Something Ralph agrees with too - maybe we need to spot for each other at landing time. 

And as promised here's a couple of pics I took at Easter when Doug and I went to the Classic Fighter Airshow in Blenheim at the Omaka aerodrome (grass runways). I think the newly completed Spitfire did it for me - what a beautiful aeroplane.

 

I have lots of video from this trip - must get a short movie together. Cheers everyone. Stay in trim.

Weekend Arrives

No more flying sorties this week. Mostly due to my change of hours at work - I am now doing midnite finishes which is taking a bit of getting used to. Its also been a bit colder which makes it harder to get motivated.

So.......I thought I'd for this post I'd show a couple of pics about whats happening in the hangar. First up is a shot of all my flyable planes gathered together in the lounge.

I've also started building a new plane - a jet which is loosely based on a Russian Su27 Flanker. The idea being to use twin fins with rudders to try and assist flying on its edge (knife edge). This is very hard to achieve without a motor, so gliders are not supposed to be able to fly knife edge. Here are the plans...

I have decided to use my old Fusion (my first kitset plane) wing for this project but it needs a rebuild after all the hits it took from learning to fly!! So here's a shot of some filler on the underside where I broke the spar :-(

And finally for now another pic of the wing with hand made extensions which will increase the wingspan to 60" or 1.5m. It still needs sanding, wrapping with fibreglass tape and covering.

Next post will include a couple of photos from my trip to Omaka at Easter for the Classic Fighters Airshow.

Stay in trim.

Greetings All - Tuesday Arvo Mount sortie

Greetings to all who have landed at this flog (my flying log!)

I decided it would be useful to post up debriefings of my sorties as and when time permits. Hopefully this will allow me to keep in touch a little more with where my time is being spent - both at home in the hanger, and out in the fields thrashing around the skies.

So just to get started, I'm not going to tell you yards and yards of background info  - other than I like slope soaring gliders. You'll learn more about me as we go along with this Flog. And so to today's little sortie up the top of Mt Maunganui.

I spent a couple of hours walking up to the top with a promise of 15+ knots of West as shown in our local Port of Tauranga's website page "Harbour Conditions". Here's an old pic of the page which shows wind strengths, direction and other stuff in yellow - all of this info is updated every two minutes. This is obviously a fantastic resource to have available for free on the internet. Thank you Port of Tauranga!!!

Ok so today was a good "forecast" and I did manage about 30mins flying the Karwai (below) but then the weather became more and more variable. At one moment if was blowing like crazy with big black clouds all over the sky. Then a few minutes later, the skies would clear and the sun would briefly come out and the wind drop off. 

After testing out a couple of landing passes, I managed to land without damage (phew) and removed 100gm of lead ballast from the underbelly of the plane. It was much easier to fly after this but then the wind got real buffetty and way over the back of the Kaimais I could see big rain showers coming. So another good landing - just love my airbrakes now they work properly - and after waiting for a while I decided the conditions were not going to improve and I headed for home. Not the nicest day I've had up the Mount!