1/2A Day(s) with new pictures, Rusty and the Bandit

Damn, we had a good weekend. It took Dave 6 hours to get to my house. Blame I-20 in Atlanta. But he finally rolled in while Holley and I were relaxin' under the Maple tree on a damp Friday afternoon. A stalled Low off the coast was sending rain to us, and I'd been refreashing weather.com 10 times a day for 4 days. We'd just play it by ear... and mostly hope.

It turned out great despite the sometimes-sideways drizzle. We fueled ourselves up with a fixed-up frozen pizza, and then, until midnight in the shop, we preflighted planes, made bladders and Dave dissected one of my TD.09s that had a funny bump in its rotation. Let me tell you about Dave. He's pure Georgia. I like that, I went to college in Ga. and I enjoyed how the natives rolled. Still do. But don't let that laid back demeanor mislead you. This boy is smart. He knows and fully understands a lot of solid stuff about myriad topics. I wish my Son, Al could meet him, they'd have fun talking about science and engineering stuff. We covered a lot of interesting things, needless to say with a modeling bias. And he used to be a copier tech! We could tell funny stories about copiers, and cool places we'd gotten to go into to work on them, Lol. That's so funny. And we watched NASA TV, one of my go-to channels. Holley had fun talking to him too. He's mostly formerly an RC guy from way back. Flying all sorts of planes from Pylon Racing to giant scale planes. He even built a plane he flies himself around in. I looked at some pictures, they reminded me of Kim's BOT pics, except higher.

We had a decent turnout in Huntersville, considering the weather. Flew some planes. A couple of people flew big stunters, but the rest of us put our various 1/2As up. If the weather had been better, I'm sure a lot more would have flown. But that's what we came for, so we sure weren't going to sit it out for a little rain. I brought both Baby Flite Streaks, the Kitty Cat, the Lil Bats, and the L'il Satan. Dave brought his Medallion .15 powered Buster, a fast flying Wildcat with a TD .051 and a couple of big planes including his electric Super Clown. He flew his screaming fast Wildcat over the pavement. And he won a trophy! A Pilots' choice "Best Appearance." It has to fly to qualify.
The usual half of an "A" emblem


There will be plenty more pics when I get them from Will Davis, the MCLS Prez. We usually get a color inside cover group photo in Control Line World, so watch for it in the next issue.

We learned a few things about flying in the rain, neither of us had done it before. Of course everything gets slicker'n owl scat, that much I already knew. First I flew my .061 powered Baby Streak. I wanted to put on an exhibition for the crowd, because this is one of the most exciting show-off planes I have, a real crowd pleaser. And I wanted a trophy too. I had a pretty large captive audience, all standing, watching from under the picnic shed. But the Big Mig ran like crap and wouldn't needle reliably. I flew one loop and then lugged around, running to catch it every time I passed upwind until it finally quit with 2/3ds of it's fuel in the bladder. We fired it up again and it was better for a while, and I did some weak whifferdills until it sputtered out. I wondered if it was running too cold because of being wet, or if water was fouling the combustion, but just guessing. Later, when we got home it turned out to have a dead glow plug. Maybe steam in the combustion chamber caused over compression and blew the glow element. With a new plug it ran fine and steady. Wiggling the needle didn't expose any leak in the venturi gasket. We'll see. I kept thinking of my other one that had a crank seizing.... whatever.

I lit up the Tee Dee on the Li'l Satan and it wasn't afraid of no rain It ran at a solid peak on 35% Glowplugboy, and I still had my audience. Only after launching it was hunting like crazy, bouncing all over the sky. Wth! I finally got it tamed, though it was s struggle... but not so much that it stopped me from slinging it around, The exhibition was on! Inverted, upright, reverse wingovers, diving into outside loops and 8s of all kinds. I got my Trophy too. I think most of these folks only fly occasionally. and some put more effort scale appearance, which is very worthy of their deserving awards. As for the control issue, it was clearly the fishing line I was using to fly the Satan. The lines tried to stick to each other like glue. Unlike any other castor-coated equipment. For that reason I left the other Streak, my R,W, and B Tee Dee baby under the shelter. I'm not about to risk wrecking it because of sticky lines. Dave's steel lines were no trouble at all.

Well we limped into the house back in Columbia to find Holley had cooked a spicy spaghetti dinner and a pot of white chicken chili, and we laid into it. Dave had two piles of spaghetti and two bowls of chili.

As if we hadn't had enough, we loaded up big Red with 1/2As and drove to the Fort for another 3 hours of flying. Still a blowing mist, just like yesterday. The Streak ran a little better than it had Saturday, but still quit with fuel in it. We re-needled and finished the flight with better results, but not the usual Norvel authority. It ran out of gas up high and directly downwind. It was a complete surprise when it turned and came straight into the circle and landed almost at my feet. And i could still feel the wind at my back while it came toward me. That was weird. Obviously a layer of wind 25' high moving exactly opposite the direction of the wind on the ground. Jeez, could the weather get any stranger!
And the Wildcat blew a plug between flights in the mist today. Is it the rain? That steam theory is my best guess.

https://youtu.be/MP2mQj-wIvo


Home again and my beautiful bride had cooked a pot of red chili and hotdogs. And that is a small nutshell of what went on with me and the Bandito this weekend.
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