Ghost of airplanes past (Part 1)

I have only started this hobby since April 2006 but I already have had five planes, three of which is currently in my hangar. I think that's a tad excessive even if I do say so myself. Wait a minute, other than these five I had three more China-made, Ready-To-Fly (RTF) planes. That makes it a whopping eight planes in around 8 months. I need help.... I don't expect myself getting any new planes in the coming months though, as the current contents of my hangar are good quality planes which I expect to see me through my aerobatic learning curve.

PLANE 1
I do not have a picture of this plane. I cannot even remeber the name of the plane. It was a virtual disaster the moment it came out of the box. It was a 2 channel plane, the only controls were: throttle speed and differential speed between the two motors. Suffice to say from its first flight/crash, it would not last one day. And it didn't.

I got this plane as me and my wife were walking through Takashimmaya Shopping Centre. We spotted this toy plane as we walking walking through the toy department. "Twenty Dollars for a plane?" I thought for that price, the plane was a steal. Never expected it to be me who was stolen from. Whipped out gift vouchers we had and duly made a prompt purchase. It was definitley not one of my prudest decisions and I'm definitley not proud of myself with this one.

Within a week, I owned another toy plane.


PLANE 2


As one of my nephews has this plane and he said that it can "fly", I decided to go for this plane as my second one. So I got myself a Silverlit Xwing.

It is supposedly unbreakable, made of EPP foam. A 5-year old can fly it. My confidence grew. But not enough, so I let my wife had a go at flying this plane first. She managed to fly it in a nice tight circle bringing it down nicely just in front of us. Seeing how well it flew, I took my turn at flying it. Subsequently it landed in a low tree. CRAP. I found a bamboo pole and speared the plane down. It came down without a sign of any damage. I did not want to fly it again for a while but my wife insisted it was a freak accident and will never happen again. Grudgingly I took the transmitter and launch the plane. It caught the wind and flew up to 12 storeys. That's when the controls did not work and i just saw the plane being blown off towards the road. CRAP. It started to lose altitude fast and landed in a tall tree. It was stuck at least 5-6 metres off the ground. I tried everything; I tried bringing it down by throwing plasticine to lodge it off its perch; I tried to bring it down with a ballast and rope, but it was too near the road so I feared that it might just hit an oncoming vehicle and scrapped the idea. There goes my second plane within 25 minutes of its maiden. Boy was I bummed.





PLANE 3

I was really bummed by my plane getting stuck in the tree within minutes of its maiden. I was moping around so bad my wife got pissed at me. She gave me an ultimatum, get me a new plane if it would make me feel better, or stop moping.... or else. I got a new plane. I cannot remember its name too, but it was yellow. Thus we named it "Nyuh Kuning." The name of the village we stayed in Bali.



The day after, we maidened the plane. It flew really nice for a two channel plane. Climbs very fast and levels out nicely. After the flying session, I felt really good that day and thought I'd tried my luck in getting my Xwing plane down from the tree (which has been up there for two days and a thunderstorm). I went down and looked up the tree that imprisoned my plane and taped five bamboo poles to make one "mega" pole. After a few shoves and a help from a kind (kaypoh) soul on a bike the plane was finally dislodged from the tree and leafed to to the ground. Hooray.

I went with a few more flights with "Nyuh Kuning." But got sick of it really fast as I did not have full control of it. That was when I made the decision to plunge myself into "real" RC planes.




To be continued...

Signing off
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