Strange air at the Fort today, Sunday, 9-13

RknRusty wrote:This is just another of my flight reports that I use as an opportunity to write a story. To all of y'all with the patience to take in the prosaic ramblings of my writing hobby, I do appreciate it. So here's another of my classic fun/practice flying day stories.

Last night with daydreams of Sunday morning flying, executing beautiful patterns. and perfectly correcting all the video recorded herky jerky motions I make while flying. I cleared the Oriental off the B&D workbench to make room for the Nobler. Last Sunday as I was launching one last flight, I waved the signal and she rolled about 10 feet and fell flat on her belly! Kind of funny at the time. The LG had parted with the fuselage, no doubt weakened to the point of failure by my usual bouncy landings. I also enlarged cooling vents again. Bob told me to. I wonder, have any of you guys that fly stunters ever experienced too much cooling in the colder weather? A winter cowl and a summer cowl? Same color too. I wondered that as I was carving away with the Dremel. I have a new un-cut one, also a new wing, flaps and fuselage.

I took the opportunity to give it a detailed once-over and fix little things, an in depth and overdue pre-flight. After making a new LG platform, I drilled and tapped my tongue muffler so I could better regulate the engine run. I love the external copper OF and Uni pipes. I bought them from Tom Morris for a few bucks. As soon as I saw them I realized even I could make that in a few minutes, and with more than a generic fit. On my Oriental, being new to full fuse planes, I underestimated the usefulness of tight, neat hard point connections to the innards. It has soft lines snaking out of the cowl to the fill/muffler and OF, and I have to use clamps to keep it from siphoning, and basically look like a monkey fumbling a football while working with it.

I know I always say something about the wind, but don't get me wrong, I'm not ever whining or making excuses, I like flying in a good stiff breeze, 10-12 knots is fine when steady. But boy it was tricky today. I didn't ask Wayne the sail-plane man how fast he thought it was, but between flights, Lance Crackers, and boiled peanuts, he continued teaching me how to understand thermals. The sky was full of all stages of Qs(esoterica for cumulus clouds), some just being born at the top of columns of rushing air, and others fat and saturated. What that column of air does at the ground is anybody's guess, and can be rather exciting for a control line pilot. During one of my flights today, Wayne said a dust devil danced across our staging pad. I told a fiblet a moment ago. I do place blame on one of these twisters for slapping my Oriental out of my control a few weeks ago. She'll be back for revenge soon, I think.

It wasn't blowing all that fast, but there were demons in the sky. Anything you dared put up today was a liability, an accident waiting to happen. Lines would collapse with a solid wind at your back, normal loops would try to plunge at the ground, jeez, it was impossible. I did try and implement some of the things I learned from my "Inside the circle..." video of last Sunday.
Here's a picture that shows some of the sky. It was like this all over. Every one, especially the small new gray bottomed ones are the source of trouble. Underneath every Q, all the way down, it's a little tube of CL hell. I was only aiming at the planes for this picture, and it's the only I took today.


Obviously it would be best to try first with the Ukey. Two things; spread the feet much farther apart, sooner, and quit rotating my handle upside down at the bottom of all types of inside pullouts. I'm convinced that's causing both bobbling when pulling out flat on bottom, especially in square corners, less so in triangular corners(oddly enough), and some minor drift in my inside round loops. Funny though, I hold my hand steady and don't rotate on outside corners, and I fly outside loops much more confidently than I do insides. It's like time slows and I can guide it with authority. I started doing high inside loops and working toward my goal of no hand rotation. When I tried none at all, I went way too low on the bottom. I finally got to where I only rotated 90*, and that worked fine, so I was able to continue. And it doesn't affect the pullout of the climb into the next loop so much. On the next flight I started to fly a regular pattern using this technique, but the wild air caused me to conservatively abort a couple of times, so I just flew some high maneuvers that I could bail out of if I had to. Disappointing that I couldn't fly a pattern. In a contest I would have, but at a risk I wasn't willing to accept in practice. I took the Nobler up, set it running fast to cut through and managed some practice maneuvers, and flew it better than the Ukey, but didn't dare do any outside squares. The sun was in the way sometimes, but I did more than one 180 to keep the wind at my back.

I think next time I will adjust the handle for a tad more UP. If I can get it to feel the same as down, my more competent direction to turn, maybe I can hit another leap in my quality. If I do, I think I stand a real shot at winning 1st Int. even against competent competition. I really hope for at least two moderate flyable days between now and the third weekend in October.

And I came home with a nice Cardinal. It's been hanging in Watt's shop for years, so needs some fixing up, but a nice pretty plane. And it came with a good LA.46 with a ST nva and a Windy universal engine mount too. Wayne also has a Fancherized Twister fuse that only needs the wing built. That's coming to me too, so I have contest profiles for Saturday at Huntersville now.

Things to look forward to!
See y'all in the funny pages.
Rusty