Bird droppings

I took it up in the air! It flies!!!



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I've begun building my new SuperFly RC airplane kit. The basic foam construction is done at this point, although I need a bit more glue to strengthen a few spots. Next step is the paint job, then the electronics get installed, then it's off to the wild blue yonder!

Geez. So, apparently, I'm a good pilot at R/C planes, but not a great mechanic. Almost every flight that I go up, I have something go wrong. Today, I was pulling some high G's doing a manic spiral, and my wing snapped off along the crack where I had crashed it before. Planes that have their wings dangling off them don't fly well, and it plummeted to the ground, with no control whatsoever, nose first. SMASH!

Broken engine mount. Broken cowling. Compressed the fuselage. Shredded the elevator. The wing was shattered into a ton of pieces, and it looks like my right aileron servo has been stripped. Lovely. I'll put this back together on Friday night with salia_chan.

Yesterday, I put her up, and started to discover the stripping of the right aileron. She started rolling to the side in really high winds, making it really hard to control her. I struggled with the wind and rolling, trying to get her to the ground, but no dice. The wind blew the plane near the trees, and it was a matter of minutes before I snagged one of them. That cut off part of the elevator and down she came. No further damage, but annoying, none the less.

Before that, I was grounded for a week due to a mild but intentional crash that shattered the engine mount and clued me in to the fact that I was using thread-lock on plastic. Thread lock is plastic corrosive.

I had another flight the day before that where I broke my engine mount. Don't remember what happened that time. I think I just screwed up in a maneuver or something.

Before that, I had a left aileron failure. I lost control of the plane and tore at high speed into the ground. The entire front half of the plane came off that time, and I did some damage throughout the plane.

Before that, I had my aileron controls reversed, and the plane went up and immediately back down. That one was the one that sheered my wing off.

Oy... My plane spends more time in "the shop" (my bedroom) getting repaired than in the sky! But apparently, this is normal with R/C planes.

Ah well... some more glue and tape and she'll be as good as new. :)