Dead air. That best describes the wind condition last saturday.
I made the best of it by taking my dusty 'ol Super Zoom 4D for a spin. It was great. Lots of low passes; upright and inverted. Lots of touch and go's too. I tell you all the hours clocked in during slope season greatly increases my confidence and improved my landings. I come in dead stick without batting an eyelid now. I love the slope season. Let's just hope the slope is still there next year cos I have a list of what I want to fly already. Namely an M60 (wing) and a Valenta Model Storm. Both very beautiful planes.
At least I got the last few gusts of wind for this season last friday. All thanks to the bug which flew in almost no wind conditions. What a pity.
Anyways, here are some videos of last Thursday's slope session. We had lots of fun trying to knock down the bottle with the Easy Glider. Ken was also there with his girlfriend and a new plane. But alas it was not too well balanced and its maiden flight was rather short.
With the end of the slope season beckoning, my resolve for finishing the Extreme Flight Extra and the retro-fitting of my Katana Mini has been renewed. Expect more build pictures down the road.
Famous last words from our friend, Scully aka Botak, before there was a mid air "incident" with Wei Yao's spanking new Raptor36. I'm not here to judge who ran into who, but that inceident sparked a slew of menacing mid-air melee. Anything that was made of foam was fair game. Even I was caught up in the heat of the action, tangling with Scully's Jazz 60 and hurtling to the ground. I also managed to accidentally whack Wei Yao's new plane for 3 more times. I betcha there's a foam magnet somewhere in his plane.
But before all the carnage, there was some really good soaring done in the slopes. I managed to really speck out the Easy Glider, highest I've been all of this first season. A feat I reckon will be difficult to emulate again. Flew inverted a couple of rounds and did the mandatory lopps and "rolls", if we could call them that with the Easy Glider. Friday was a good day. Everybody at the slopes had fun. It was very easy to see.
Saturday morning started out beautifully. The sun was shining, the winds were blowing and the sky was relatively clear. My wife and I managed to finish up three loads of laundry, and they were drying up in record time. We also had breakfast at the nearby Indian stall. The fish curry was not bad but the "vade" was excellent. It was not oily and the spices were just right. I especially like the fact that they used whole black pepper seeds instead of grinding them, my wife thinks otherwise. It was a good morning.
I came back from breakfast and had a thorough run through of my bruised and battered easy glider. Boy did it take a beating from the previous day. The rudder control horns came loose, there were cracks running down the chord of the stab at the wing root, the leading edge was a landscape of dings and dents and the nose was just crushed. Nothing some CA and boiling water could not cure. For added measure for future melees, I taped up the leading edges of my wings and vertical fin and I was done and ready for another day of sloping fun.
The time at the slope was equally as good as the morning; the winds were blowing directly towards the slope and the constantly too. The Easy Glider had another good day and it even beat the altitude record that it set the previous day. More of the same fun that it had on Friday. Not forgetting the mandatory whacking of Wei Yao's R36 out of the air. I tell you it is a magnet in his plane. And a mid-air with Ken's Easy Glider. But all's good, everybody came out of it relatively unscathed.
"Scully's Innocence Plea"
"Spectacular Landing by Wei Yao"
Other guys also had a go on the R36, namely Syming and also Pang. I had some great still shots of it and a nice lores vid of it too.
"Pang with the R36"
Pang also maidened his Banana. Nice. Fast. Furious. That is one very effective plane. It was very sleek except for the mis-coloured servo bay covers. He had nice red ones but the shop sent him a plane with blue stripes instead. But it does make it a special plane in its own right. I have to say it again, it is a very nice plane. Really.
So far it's been a wonderful weekend at the slopes and I tend to lose all track of time. I really have to start putting an alarm to tell me to go home. There's still a Sunday afternoon for flying, but to tell you the truth; I'm sated. No wonder everybody was so looking forward to slope season. I'm glad I didn't pass the opportunity to experience it first hand.
Signing off, RandomTask
P.S. The images for the past few blog entries have been taken with my new Sony Ericsson K800i. Excellent picture quality and very handy. Now it's so much easier for me to take pictures at the field as I don't have to lug around another camera. I'd recommend this phone to everybody.
It has been a great few weeks of slope gliding. Bigger gliders are now seen at the slope, more people are joining in and at times up to ten gliders in the air. What more is there to say, life's good.
Flying powered planes now a pain, the winds are forcing me to fight the plane more than flying it. Coupled with an off-shaped plane (Super Zoom 4D), made it almost unenjoyable. So now I'll continue to slowly build by Extreme Flight Extra 330 so that once the winds die down, I'll have a spanking new plane for the off-slope season. I'll build this plane right, straight and slowly. It's a big investment and I don't want to take any chances, thus the investment of tools to facilitate in the ground testing and build.
