The model I chose was my Occhipinti’s Tailwind Peanut.\u00a0 This was the first model I drew up and built after my 10+ year layoff from the hobby.\u00a0 I was seeing if I could “still” draw and build; an attempt to get back into the groove.\u00a0 The model turned out nicely, but it never really flew well.\u00a0 In fact, I doubt I hit a minute on it ever – and a high wing, retract gear, light weight Peanut should be able to do a minute!\u00a0 So this model was often dragged around to contests for 3 years, but rarely flown.\u00a0 I have better flying Peanuts.\u00a0 But it would be good for an evening of tossing something around in the back yard.<\/p>\n
As I walked out to the yard with it, I tried to recall what I need to do to get it to fly.\u00a0 I know that it failed completely before, but something recently had been giving me hope (by “recently” I mean sometime last summer).\u00a0 I put about 400 turns in the long loop of 3\/32″ rubber and gave it a toss into the calm air.\u00a0 It climbed, proving\u00a0 my recent memories of potential, but was quite stall-y.\u00a0 I recalled that early failure was likely due to a nose-heavy condition and I had removed all added nose weight from the model.\u00a0 Now it was clearly tail heavy.\u00a0 I added a pea of clay to the spinner and gave it another toss.\u00a0 This one was much better, especially in the glide, but still stalling under power – shim that nose block!<\/p>\n
So I did.\u00a0 I used some of Mother Nature’s on-field shim material, in this case the stem of one of last fall’s maple leaves.\u00a0 I gave it down and a little left and the same 400 winds.\u00a0 Well, that did the trick, the plane climbed up and circled and got higher and higher, now it was above the height of the evergreens that surround my back yard.\u00a0 No worries, there was only light drift and I had started far enough away that the plane should spiral down shortly within the yard.<\/p>\n
Well, not quite.\u00a0 The pea of clay on the nose and the long motor laying in the fuselage must have been just right…the glide slope was very flat – this was good news for the future of the model – for about 10 seconds.\u00a0 As the plane circled and slowly descended, it drifted east into the evergreens.\u00a0 It got stuck about 30 feet up deep within the tree.\u00a0 I went to find my retrieval stick, but knowing it was too high.\u00a0 When I got back to the tree, I noticed that a breeze was picking up.\u00a0 I saw the model shift; it actually fell about 2 feet.\u00a0 The weather forecast called for a couple of nice days with some 7 mph winds, surely the wind would bump the model out of the tree.\u00a0 As of last night, the model was still stuck in the same place.\u00a0 The weather is turning to rain; it has already sprinkled some today, with a projection of real rain later in the day.\u00a0 At least I can go visit its final resting place.<\/p>\n
It is strange…this model has never been a favorite.\u00a0 I rarely have flown it in contests – it wasn’t competitive – in flight or as a high wing.\u00a0 It should have been, but never was.\u00a0 But, I want it back.\u00a0 So why has this affected me more than the fly-away of my Chambermaid Dime Scale last Sunday?\u00a0 That plane was a proven winner and would have continued to serve me well.\u00a0 This plane…maybe it is because I can see it…maybe because I overcame the problems with it…maybe because it was its turn (having sat in the box and now ready to perform)…maybe because…\u00a0 \u00a0I don’t know, but that’s the hazard of Free Flight.<\/p>\n
We reached a milestone yesterday, 15 April 2015:\u00a0 200 Facebook Likes for our Volare Products Facebook Page.\u00a0 That’s something small, but it made me ponder a bit – 200 different people, all with some degree of interest in Model Airplanes, … Continue reading ![\"start14a\"](\"https:\/\/volareproducts.com\/new2024\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/start14a.jpg\")
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