Eagle's first flight
When I was around 13, my best friend got into flying RC planes. I was excited to join him, and I bought my own plane kit. It's called the Eagle 63, and cost $60, probably one of the cheaper kits. In reality it was just a bunch of sheets of balsa wood, some dowels, and a couple plastic and metal bits in a big flat box. Some of the balsa sheets were pre-punched, while others had to be sawed out using paper diagrams and cutouts. I remember the whole process taking for-ev-er... At least a month if not more of spending most evenings after school in my room gluing and cutting and whatnot, creating a gigantic mess.
I was very proud of it when it was finally finished, and I got it completely ready to fly, but I was afraid to actually fly it, because I figured I would crash it. I was also very shy and afraid to go out and ask anyone to train me to fly it. I would think that if I'd gone with my friend, I would have been able to use him to do the talking, but for some reason that never happened... I think it might be because he crashed his plane and didn't get to fixing it, actually. In any case, with my fear of destroying all my hard work combined with shyness and how far the field was, I didn't get to flying it.
I think I eventually sold the engine to my friend because I wanted money for something else, but I kept the plane with me for all this time. Next time the RC flight bug hit me was when I was about 26, when I saw those RC gliders flying at the beach nearby (there's a LJ about it awhile back). I built myself a glider and got a remote for it that I knew could also be used for a gas powered plane (the original remote I'd gotten when I was 13 was no longer certified for use under newer radio rules). At some point I also got a new gas engine and ran it for awhile to break it in, because Royelle got excited when she found out I had a plane, but we still didn't go fly it.
When we moved to the valley, I noticed little planes flying around a park that isn't too far away from us. We went out there one weekend and watched helicopters flipping inverted, spinning as if out of control. The sky was filled with a dozen small planes, some doing crazy acrobatics. A few sleek jets were taken apart on the tarmac, and I overheard that they often get only 20 minutes of flight followed by two hours of maintenance. One that looked like a fighter jet was eventually prepared and took off like a rocket, sounding like a real jet and making streaking low passes down the runway followed by straight-up shots into the sky. It was pretty amazing to be there.
I wrote down numbers to call for flight training, but Royelle was more bold, asking around and eventually locating a guy who said he would train us for $5 a flight. Not too bad... except he figured we'd take 30 flights to learn. We thanked him and headed off. Later on, Royelle called a number I'd written down for a free flight trainer named Skydog. He turned out to be very cool. He's been flying for 20 years, always teaching for free, even when he was homeless. Maybe a little too much dedication, there? He must really love it, though, cause he's at the airfield for hours on most days.
We set up an apointment to fly, headed out, but we got too much gas in our engine so it shot out the muffler and then it wouldn't start. It was very frustrating since we'd started it the day before, but soon we realized the nose cone was broken and we couldn't use the electric starter motor that pushes against the cone to spin the prop fast. Thus we tried to start it by flicking it by hand. After an hour, we gave up and flew on Skydog's trainer. It's a small white plane that's kind of touchy in the air, hard to keep straight. It felt a lot like my red glider, which is also unstable and hard to keep straight, so my glider flight experience certainly helped. "I thought you didn't know how to fly?!", Skydog commented. Royelle and I practiced flying circles around the runway, trying to line up with runway center from high above. It's rather hard to do, since you can't see the runway and the plane at the same time.
We came back the next day with a new nose cone and had to run the electric motor against it for quite awhile before it started. Mostly the engine seems to flood too easily and then you have to roll it backward to get some fuel out, or disconnect the fuel source and roll it forward. The ironic thing was this was Fri the 13th. All these years I'd worried about my plane crashing, and I go and fly it first on Fri the 13th. I've never in my life had anything bad happen on a Fri the 13th, and in some ways I like to thumb my nose at silly superstitions, so it was actually a good day. If Fri the 13th really has any power to make bad things happen, it is simply in its causing us to dwell on and expect bad things, thus drawing them to us. I did not expect bad things.
I was thrilled to see the plane take off, watching it bank and fly. Soon Skydog let me take over, and I found it to be very stable and easy to fly, especially compared to that smaller plane from the day before. Skydog says he thinks the Eagle series are probably the best trainer planes due to their stability. Once again, I flew circles, getting a little lower this time. Skydog didn't seem to want me getting too low, though I wanted to get closer to the runway. I let Royelle take over and she flew the same sorts of patterns. Then the fuel ran out and skydog yelled "dead stick". I have no idea why, since the "stick" (the flight controls) are still very much alive, you just don't have engine power. You'd think I might have freaked out at this point, but the plane looked well under control so I just trusted him to handle it. He did a great landing and the plane was fine.
Here's my plane up close. 20 years of sitting around has caused some discoloration, lots of patched puncture holes, and it's a little grimey from running the engine on the ground for an hour to break it in. If you look past all that, I still think it looks rather cool with the translucent red wings showing the thin balsa struts within. I don't think they tend to build wings like that anymore, it's usually foam these days. I remember it taking forever to assemble.
My plane's first takeoff. I'm still amazed it flew after sitting around so long, and that it didn't fall apart due to old glue or something. I'm somewhat amazed it flew at all, considering all the complex little bits and control rods and things that went into it. It didn't need any adjustments or anything to fly straight and level.
A very sharp bank. You wouldn't want to try this in a full-size plane, unless it were made for aerobatics. Kind of odd to see a model plane that looks like a cessna do such odd things, but on later days we had it doing flips, rolls, inverted flight, hammerhead stalls...
The wings look pretty like this.
And like this.
We flew the plane so long it ran out of fuel. Luckily this plane glides very well and as long as you have reasonable altitude it's not too hard to reach the runway and land. Skydog got it lined up and is about to touch down here (notice the propeller isn't moving).
Skydog made a great landing on all three wheels. Technically you're supposed to land on the rear wheels before the front wheel, so maybe it wasn't the best landing, but it looked great either way.
The sun sets on the Eagle's first flight.
Here's some pictures of other planes and things from earlier in the day:
A handsome bird we kept seeing in the distance. He would flap his wings to hover in various places, as if watching for prey. He dove down a couple times as if to catch something, but I didn't see him being successful.
A cool view through the cockpit as someone takes off.
Three planes in front of some beautiful clouds.
Low pass along the runway from a nice-looking plane. You can also see some of the people who stand near the runway controlling the planes.
Here's the same plane silhouetted against the sky.
Very cool red and blue plane doing a touch and go.
Red and blue plane... up up and away.
This blue hawk looks so cool. It's taxiing out to the runway.
Uh oh... this won't end well... Actually, it ended with the only damage being the propeller broken off. Plane wasn't moving too fast. The ironic thing is that this crash was the result of the instructor who "takes donations" to teach letting his student bounce on landing, float up, stall, and tip nose-down into the grass.
This really reminds me of a scene in One-Six-Right, but this is a scale model. The smoke trail is awesome.
Since then we've gone flying three more days. I was making lower passes on the second day, but we had to wait forever for our radio channel 38 to be vacant and we didn't get to fly very long. He had us cut power to idle and "float", which shows how good the plane is at gliding slowly. It made me feel I could have landed it without much trouble, but we had to go. On the third day I practiced real approaches to landings, flying very low. Then it was Royelle's turn. She made a sort of landing, but it bounced and nicked the prop into the ground, stopping it. We had to go shave off a piece from the other side to even it out.
When it was my turn again I went around a number of times until he said I could try landing it. I made my first landing without too much trouble, taking off again immediately, doing it again, and then let Royelle take over because it was almost dark and I knew she wanted to get a proper landing down. She did it with ease and that was that.
We went out again today and were landing constantly. I was probably getting a little too zealous as I had the plane coming right towards us a couple times and another time it headed right towards another guy near the end of the runway. It's tough, cause you're watching the plane and you can't see someone standing way off ahead of it, but I had it banked away from him quickly and it ended up looking more funny than anything as he ran off the other way. =) But, of course, you have to take safety seriously, cause those propellers could certainly hurt someone or damage a car.
Anyway, it's great fun and easier than I would have thought. Flying gliders first helped a lot, of course. It's great to finally get that plane doing something. I've gotta resume flying the big planes next, which is something I let lapse as we moved. Until next time...
I was very proud of it when it was finally finished, and I got it completely ready to fly, but I was afraid to actually fly it, because I figured I would crash it. I was also very shy and afraid to go out and ask anyone to train me to fly it. I would think that if I'd gone with my friend, I would have been able to use him to do the talking, but for some reason that never happened... I think it might be because he crashed his plane and didn't get to fixing it, actually. In any case, with my fear of destroying all my hard work combined with shyness and how far the field was, I didn't get to flying it.
I think I eventually sold the engine to my friend because I wanted money for something else, but I kept the plane with me for all this time. Next time the RC flight bug hit me was when I was about 26, when I saw those RC gliders flying at the beach nearby (there's a LJ about it awhile back). I built myself a glider and got a remote for it that I knew could also be used for a gas powered plane (the original remote I'd gotten when I was 13 was no longer certified for use under newer radio rules). At some point I also got a new gas engine and ran it for awhile to break it in, because Royelle got excited when she found out I had a plane, but we still didn't go fly it.
When we moved to the valley, I noticed little planes flying around a park that isn't too far away from us. We went out there one weekend and watched helicopters flipping inverted, spinning as if out of control. The sky was filled with a dozen small planes, some doing crazy acrobatics. A few sleek jets were taken apart on the tarmac, and I overheard that they often get only 20 minutes of flight followed by two hours of maintenance. One that looked like a fighter jet was eventually prepared and took off like a rocket, sounding like a real jet and making streaking low passes down the runway followed by straight-up shots into the sky. It was pretty amazing to be there.
I wrote down numbers to call for flight training, but Royelle was more bold, asking around and eventually locating a guy who said he would train us for $5 a flight. Not too bad... except he figured we'd take 30 flights to learn. We thanked him and headed off. Later on, Royelle called a number I'd written down for a free flight trainer named Skydog. He turned out to be very cool. He's been flying for 20 years, always teaching for free, even when he was homeless. Maybe a little too much dedication, there? He must really love it, though, cause he's at the airfield for hours on most days.
We set up an apointment to fly, headed out, but we got too much gas in our engine so it shot out the muffler and then it wouldn't start. It was very frustrating since we'd started it the day before, but soon we realized the nose cone was broken and we couldn't use the electric starter motor that pushes against the cone to spin the prop fast. Thus we tried to start it by flicking it by hand. After an hour, we gave up and flew on Skydog's trainer. It's a small white plane that's kind of touchy in the air, hard to keep straight. It felt a lot like my red glider, which is also unstable and hard to keep straight, so my glider flight experience certainly helped. "I thought you didn't know how to fly?!", Skydog commented. Royelle and I practiced flying circles around the runway, trying to line up with runway center from high above. It's rather hard to do, since you can't see the runway and the plane at the same time.
We came back the next day with a new nose cone and had to run the electric motor against it for quite awhile before it started. Mostly the engine seems to flood too easily and then you have to roll it backward to get some fuel out, or disconnect the fuel source and roll it forward. The ironic thing was this was Fri the 13th. All these years I'd worried about my plane crashing, and I go and fly it first on Fri the 13th. I've never in my life had anything bad happen on a Fri the 13th, and in some ways I like to thumb my nose at silly superstitions, so it was actually a good day. If Fri the 13th really has any power to make bad things happen, it is simply in its causing us to dwell on and expect bad things, thus drawing them to us. I did not expect bad things.
I was thrilled to see the plane take off, watching it bank and fly. Soon Skydog let me take over, and I found it to be very stable and easy to fly, especially compared to that smaller plane from the day before. Skydog says he thinks the Eagle series are probably the best trainer planes due to their stability. Once again, I flew circles, getting a little lower this time. Skydog didn't seem to want me getting too low, though I wanted to get closer to the runway. I let Royelle take over and she flew the same sorts of patterns. Then the fuel ran out and skydog yelled "dead stick". I have no idea why, since the "stick" (the flight controls) are still very much alive, you just don't have engine power. You'd think I might have freaked out at this point, but the plane looked well under control so I just trusted him to handle it. He did a great landing and the plane was fine.
Here's my plane up close. 20 years of sitting around has caused some discoloration, lots of patched puncture holes, and it's a little grimey from running the engine on the ground for an hour to break it in. If you look past all that, I still think it looks rather cool with the translucent red wings showing the thin balsa struts within. I don't think they tend to build wings like that anymore, it's usually foam these days. I remember it taking forever to assemble.
My plane's first takeoff. I'm still amazed it flew after sitting around so long, and that it didn't fall apart due to old glue or something. I'm somewhat amazed it flew at all, considering all the complex little bits and control rods and things that went into it. It didn't need any adjustments or anything to fly straight and level.
A very sharp bank. You wouldn't want to try this in a full-size plane, unless it were made for aerobatics. Kind of odd to see a model plane that looks like a cessna do such odd things, but on later days we had it doing flips, rolls, inverted flight, hammerhead stalls...
The wings look pretty like this.
And like this.
We flew the plane so long it ran out of fuel. Luckily this plane glides very well and as long as you have reasonable altitude it's not too hard to reach the runway and land. Skydog got it lined up and is about to touch down here (notice the propeller isn't moving).
Skydog made a great landing on all three wheels. Technically you're supposed to land on the rear wheels before the front wheel, so maybe it wasn't the best landing, but it looked great either way.
The sun sets on the Eagle's first flight.
Here's some pictures of other planes and things from earlier in the day:
A handsome bird we kept seeing in the distance. He would flap his wings to hover in various places, as if watching for prey. He dove down a couple times as if to catch something, but I didn't see him being successful.
A cool view through the cockpit as someone takes off.
Three planes in front of some beautiful clouds.
Low pass along the runway from a nice-looking plane. You can also see some of the people who stand near the runway controlling the planes.
Here's the same plane silhouetted against the sky.
Very cool red and blue plane doing a touch and go.
Red and blue plane... up up and away.
This blue hawk looks so cool. It's taxiing out to the runway.
Uh oh... this won't end well... Actually, it ended with the only damage being the propeller broken off. Plane wasn't moving too fast. The ironic thing is that this crash was the result of the instructor who "takes donations" to teach letting his student bounce on landing, float up, stall, and tip nose-down into the grass.
This really reminds me of a scene in One-Six-Right, but this is a scale model. The smoke trail is awesome.
Since then we've gone flying three more days. I was making lower passes on the second day, but we had to wait forever for our radio channel 38 to be vacant and we didn't get to fly very long. He had us cut power to idle and "float", which shows how good the plane is at gliding slowly. It made me feel I could have landed it without much trouble, but we had to go. On the third day I practiced real approaches to landings, flying very low. Then it was Royelle's turn. She made a sort of landing, but it bounced and nicked the prop into the ground, stopping it. We had to go shave off a piece from the other side to even it out.
When it was my turn again I went around a number of times until he said I could try landing it. I made my first landing without too much trouble, taking off again immediately, doing it again, and then let Royelle take over because it was almost dark and I knew she wanted to get a proper landing down. She did it with ease and that was that.
We went out again today and were landing constantly. I was probably getting a little too zealous as I had the plane coming right towards us a couple times and another time it headed right towards another guy near the end of the runway. It's tough, cause you're watching the plane and you can't see someone standing way off ahead of it, but I had it banked away from him quickly and it ended up looking more funny than anything as he ran off the other way. =) But, of course, you have to take safety seriously, cause those propellers could certainly hurt someone or damage a car.
Anyway, it's great fun and easier than I would have thought. Flying gliders first helped a lot, of course. It's great to finally get that plane doing something. I've gotta resume flying the big planes next, which is something I let lapse as we moved. Until next time...