Monday After Christmas

Hope everyone enjoyed Christmas and didn't overdo the eating part. At the moment we are still getting all westerlies here - horrible bouncy flying conditions off the Mount and really only flyable from the top. But sadly we still give it a go... Here's a pic of John's Banshee blasting over the harbour entrance on a close fast pass.




On the construction side, I have finally settled on my method for building the 2m sloper - a combination of sheeted light ply ribs and EPP foam leading edge. Might have a go at glassing the wing and the fuse is looking like f/glass over a blue foam core. Yikes! My first attempt at a fiberglass fuse...

Here's a progress shot showing the layout of the ballast tube and valve with the servo and the two inner ribs. Yes, it's under way!



Happy New Year to everyone - let's hope 2010 is a better year all round.

New Project - The Ultimate Sloper

Well it had to happen - sooner or later I was going to have a go at designing my Ultimate Sloper. Of course there are certain criteria for a beast like this (land amongst the Mount rocks with little damage, fast, energy retention, good looking etc) so it will have big boots to fill. But this is what I'm attempting to do.

From the outset I have decided that this plane will have jettisonable ballast (water) to allow softer, slower landings after a big heavy blast aroung the sky. And we're not talking "lead sled" dimensions here - I just want to try for about 400g ballast on a 2m wing to allow me to explore the possibilities.

So, without further ado, here are the plans with the ballast tube (square box section aluminium) including the water release valve.



And another shot showing a closeup of the valve - not that it shows much. I spent a long time searching for a suitable sized valve. In the end I have butchered and kit-bashed my own using a bit of TLAR (that looks about right) technology. Then I covered it in epoxy to hold it together.

More about the construction soon.

Tough Day at the Mount

With the equinox winds in full stride, the Mount would normally be pretty good in a big westerly off the top - but today it was as fickle as a feather - good strong lift one moment followed by sink the next. I was up there with Ralphie and Johnny but after a nice ballasted fly with the Flanker I tried for a second flight and the sink caught me out taking the plane way way down until it mushed out into the grass right down the bottom.

On a later flight from further round the top at the end of the day I got into differculties again. It was really hard to keeep orientaton of the beast as we were staring into the hazy glare of the late afternoon sun. Lost it again - this time over the back of the steep north face and had a mammoth task retrieving it. Had to climb up from the bottom, then I thought it was too steep to descend with plane, so, after overcoming my fear on a steep face, I managed to climb back to the top by chucking the plane up ahead a few feet at a time. Phew.

Hope you like the video here - one of Ralph's Graphite - the other of Johnny's new Banshee sloper.

And here's the Patriot at Raglan

Raglan Videos

Ok, here's my first attempt at posting a video to the flog. This is from a great day Ralph and I had at Raglan in early November.