I drove over to Newark OH to fly our little slope overlooking the Licking
River. It was a beautiful fall day with warm southwest winds, some
thermals popping off the slope, fall color, and for some reason no one else
showed up.
When I go sloping I tend to throw every plane I can lay hands on into the
van. You never know. So I flew the Zagi THL and the Stealth Sloper and
even the Chrysl-Stick, which you may be tired of hearing about by now.
The Chrysl-stick is a DJ Aerotech 60" HLG with left over Pico Stick
landing gear and a GWS A-drive motor spinning an 8" prop. It will ROG,
strangley enough, and I had previously flown it at our flat field,
thermaling with the prop stopped, and also flown it as a park flyer off
school parking lots. A few weeks ago a I had flown it indoors at the golf
dome. And today I sloped it.
The great light lift had the Chrysl-stick specked out several times, and
I only used the motor to power out into the lift band on launch.
Not many planes fly indoors, park, thermal and slope!
I also flew Fred the Four Dollar Sloper. This is an old Freedom 72"
sloper that Paul Wiese finally gave me after failing to sell it at about
three successive swap shops. It looks to have been designed to fly
aileron/elevator and I think Paul added a rudder and rudder servo. It has
4 giant D-cell nicads stuffed in up front to balance it, and the aileron
linkages are hanging out there exposed on top of the wing in front of Gordy
and everybody. This is a heavy old airplane, with a fuselage like a
baseball bat and a big fat balsa over foam core bagged wing.
I added $4 worth of ancient Airtronics servos from a swap meet, and glued
and trimmed and monokoted. It looked pretty much like a jet fighter, and a
little like a sailplane.
When I programmed it onto my JR XP783, the TX only gave me four letters to
name the model, so Freedom became Fred, and thus it became Fred the $4
Sloper. I ran it up on a high start a few months ago, and it had
horrendous adverse yaw. Steve Krupp helped me program that out of
existence. Today was my first chance to try flying it on the slope.
I tossed it off the slope, added a little up trim, and away it went. I
flew it Aileron/Elevator for a while, and landed out when the wind
died. On the second flight I remembered that I had a rudder, and that
really made the plane come alive. This is a nice flying, very steady,
moderately fast airplane, with enough weight to punch through the Buena
Vista Street rotor and land smoothly on the grass. Since Paul made it
available free, I am going to offer it to any of our club members who want
to try stepping up to a little heavier sloper. Heck, I've only got $4 in it!
RCSE-List facilities provided by Model Airplane News. Send "subscribe" and "unsubscribe" requests to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please note that subscribe and unsubscribe messages must be sent in text only format with MIME turned off.
