I'm Back......

Well, I was away last week on holidays at the cabin. Yes, it was nice to be off work for a week, but on the other hand, this guy here does NOT like heat and high humidity..... As luck had it, it was both hot and humid. Average temps this past week were 86 - 104 with both temperatures and the humidity. So not as much time spent outside. Then to top it all off, it is 'witching season' here. The unbelievable amounts of mosquitoes, and the countless numbers of both horse flies and deer flies. Mosquitoes were mainly an evening and night thing, and the others daytime, but when near the grass, horse flies were again present.

So I had big hopes and dreams to play with my Cox engines and fly a couple of control line 1/2a planes while there. That was very short lived as I did soon find out I left my nitro fuel at home. I did not feel like driving the just shy of 2 hours each way for the fuel, so scratched that! Off to maiden a new profile foamy F-22 design. Well, that didn't last long either. I had reservations about it flying well as soon as I finished building it. It is a prop-in-slot design, and where the slot is, it levt very little strength between the front and rear of the fuselage, and scaling it down a couple inches to fit on a piece of foamboard with same size prop slot probably did not help any. So remove the electronics, no big deal. Then I go try out my new mini drone (about 3" diameter). It was a squirrely little thing indoors so outside it went. Sun was just starting to go down, but still bright. Well, first attempt to rise off teh grass was not working. I picked it up, gave it a tiny toss upwards and hit the throttle. Wow, did it rise quick to about 40-50 feet. Then I miraculously had no control of it! This was in the front yard of the cabin. It started going to the back in which there is a field approximately 3 soccer fields big all while under its own control. As this oversized figure realized what was happening I started running to teh back to see wher it is going. As I was running there, I saw what appeared to be it going down, but saw it while running and my view was blocked by the guest house. About 4 hours later of walking in a grid type pattern in 3-4 foot tall grass over 2 days, and about 1 1/2 hours of that were with a metal detector) infested with mosquitoes and horse flies, I had decided to call it quits and write it off as a loss. On the bright side, I did get to see it fly, and fly it did. Worst part is I just got it as a gift from a good friend, and that hurt me the most. I was going to try another plane, but decided to call it quits that day. The next day I did get a flight in with my UMX Champ though and that at least felt good.