- 10C, light breeze, just perfect for a perfect maiden flight.
First flights of 2012. After what seems like a long hibernation, I finally found myself at the right spot at the right time with the right toys. Temp around 10C, light breeze, broken clouds, and a dry-ish field. The buzzards were out already, so lets go!
As these things go, the preparation at home seems to have paid off. 1st flight, a bit nervous (me) but she behaves well, don’t touch flaps, just a few circles to get a feel for it. Feels slightly noseheave (at 106mm CG) but safe. Landing is uneventful. 2nd flight, keep the power on till it beeps (12sec) Altitude approx 80 meters (guess). Again, nothing funny, just flip over to thermal settings. no trim change, no nothing. Speed mode, same nothing. Flaps 1/4.. all good. Half flaps, still fine, just slows down nicely, with nice nose down attitude. Flaps all the way, gives me crowbrakes. Yep, it does stop! You sure need to remember not to do that low, because it will fall like a brick! Ok, funny stuff over and in for a nice landing, with approx 1/8-1/4 flaps. Do remember to push the spoilers all the way up (as in full power for you average noisy plankflyer) before you get too low &slow. 3rd flight. Ok let’s see the climbout now. I measured approx 450 watt on a fresh battery charge, it’s not like a rocket, but certainly not bad. With some tweeking I’ll get to 100 meters in 10 secs. Given that I seem to use approx 100mAh each time I go up, I have ample room to play with power/props/times. It has a 19*8 up front at the moment, going to a higher pitch will not harm! Anyway, back to the present. 3rd flight, lets try some speed. With flaps at neutral, just push it down. And yes, it does pick up speed, but nothing too bad. There’s quite a bit of whistling though, likely the clevises on the wings. After a few more circlings(tm), back to earth. This time a bit more confident with flaps, in for a nice slow landing. 4th time. Trying to find a bit of rising air, but not much luck yet. I need to play with flaps a lot more before I get the best settings. After 4 minutes or so it starts to drizzle, and I call it a day. This time I pull the flaps on the outskirts of the field at approx 30 meters, and a nice relaxed slightly nose-down decent follows. Again, at approx 2 feet, let go of the flaps, to pick up a bit of speed for the final flare. 
Back at home I put back 450mAh into the battery, that’s roughly 100mAh per flight. With a 3300 pack, that will give me plenty to play with. I have one of these 3300 Turnigy Nano-tech packs in it, I can charge them at 10C = 30 amps. My charger does not go that far, but if in a hurry, you can surely get back in the air soon. For the moment I’ll leave the other packs unused, I doubt I will need to swap them at the field. Finding a 4S pack that fits the fuse will be high on the agenda, but so far I have had no luck.
As to all the usual ‘stuff’: I upgraded my tranny to a newer version of the ACT-modules I’ve been using for some time now. This one does support telemetry. (as if I need that) but the real reason was that I needed an 8 channel Rx that would fit into the fuse. All the movements are provided by MKS, darn’ expensive and heavy, but boy, not having any slop on your moving parts is worth it! Ailerons are fitted with Hyperion 09′s, there was no room for anything else.
All in all a very nice model, with lots of potential for a loads of good playtime! So far I have re-learned a lot about setting up the Tx, and even though I thought I knew all there was to know about a MC4000, I now realise, I did not know anything yet. Many thanks go to Mike Shellim at RC-soar for figuring it all out!
kees
Some links to remember who supplied all the stuff.
The weekend was not much to write about, but I was lucky to have the day off. The morning produced some nice thermals, the kind of stuff that makes you very scared! This was my first flight above 300 meter, and actually touching 400! This is when planes get really small. I was flying under a white cloud, which gave me enough contrast to see, but against the blue sky, I was having a hard time keeping the plane in sight. Coming down out of the thermal was a hairy experience, I thought best to fly long decending passes. With the GPS switched to speed, I could keep things nice and steady and still come down. Around 100 meters I picked up the next thermal, this one even stronger then the previous one. The decents near the top are not me falling out of the thermal, but actually deliberately pushing down, to get out of it! As soon as I would let go of my elevator, it would jump up like a home-sick angel.
