September Free Flight Follies

September turned into a really nice weather month up here in the Syracuse, NY area so I tried to take advantage of it by playing around with my fleet of three free-flight planes. All of them needed some minor work before trying to fly them and then it was an issue of trimming each one of the three of them so that they’d actually fly. By the end of the month, two of them were back in the repair hanger, one was in the trash, and a new build was in progress on the building board. It could be looked at as an unsuccessful flying month but in reality, I made some good flight progress and learned a bit in this free flight aspect of the modeling hobby which I don’t engage in as much as other hobby aspects.

First up was the Jr. Commercial which is where I achieved my biggest successes. At the start of the month, I was dealing with a plane that had several issues preventing it from gliding more than a few feet. One by one, I worked through the issues which included adjusting the angle of incidence of the wing (I raised the trailing edge of the wing), porpoising on takeoff (I added more down-thrust to the propeller), and finally dealing with a decided left bank of the plane which was caused by a warped wing (I steamed out the warp before each flying session). By the end, I had several successful flights and was working up the ladder of successively greater motor winds (increasing the flight duration) when the motor broke and shredded the fuselage covering in several places. There had already been several past repairs to the fuselage so I used the opportunity to remove all the fuselage covering in preparation for recovering it. The rest of the plane is intact and so should be ready for more flights after the new covering.

Here is the one video that was made of one of my more successful flights (850 winds resulting in a full 40-second flight!):

Here is the current state of the plane (it WILL fly again!):

(Click on photos to zoom in on them)

 

Next up was the Kharkov which was built and talked about in several FlyBoyz Posts many years ago:  Kharkov R10 – Build Report 05…It is DONE! This plane had many issues and over the years had been crashed and repaired many times in efforts to get it to fly. I gave it one more round at the flying field and it was as much of a mess as ever. I finally decided that any more time spent on it would be wasted time so it went to the plane graveyard.

That took me next to the Guillows Cessna Bird Dog which was the subject of a FlyBoyz post last year: Building a Cessna Bird – Dog. Like all my planes, it started out with a plethora of issues. The first big one was that the plane was very tail-heavy. I finally ended up filling the nose cowl with clay before the Center of Gravity was in a reasonable position for me to move on to the next issue. And that was adding more downthrust to the propeller. At this point, the plane would at least glide while under low levels of power (100 – 200 winds), however, it had a decided left bank. I added a gurney flap under the left wing which appeared to straighten out the banking issue…at least while only cranking in 100-200 winds on the motor. I finally decided to add a bit more power and cranked in 450 winds. The plane did a beautiful full left-hand barrel roll before crashing to the ground at full power breaking the propeller and landing gear. Fixing the landing gear necessitates tearing through the tissue covering on both sides of the forward fuselage so the plane was added to the repair hanger with the Jr. Commercial.

Here is the current state of the plane (it also WILL fly again!):

One other thing that I learned that I was able to apply to all three of these planes, was how to braid a motor. It turned out to be easier than I feared and it adds so much to the abilities of the rubber motors used in these free-flight planes. If anything, my efforts this past month were worth that education alone.

So, with two planes back in the hangar and one in the graveyard, it was time to start building another! This month also featured the annual Guillow’s Model Build-Off which is hosted in a Facebook Group. This annual build is what inspired me to build the Bird Dog last year. This year, the group voted to build the Guillow’s Hawker Typhoon. I had this kit in my build inventory so I pulled it out and it is currently in progress. It is in the same Guillow’s kit series as the Bird Dog. I had lots of trouble building the Bird Dog and it took me a long time to build. The Typhoon is proving to be a much easier plane to build and I am moving right along with it. It may even be finished in time to try a flight with it before the snow starts flying up here.

Here is the current state of the build (it’ll probably be the subject of a separate post once completed):

 

I find Free Flight to be a frustrating part of the hobby. The builds are difficult with the delicate parts being tested against my shaky hands and bad eyes, and the flight trimming is still a largely unexplored skill to me. However, when a plane you built does take to the sky and flies like it is supposed to, it is very rewarding! I find a lot of inspiration in watching YouTube videos of the great free flight builders and fliers, and hope that one day I will have at least one plane that flies at least half as good as those of these experts.