I had a Blast early Saturday morning!
I can't remember a more perfect flying weather. between 7:00am and about 9:30 the temp was in the low to mid 70's, kind of damp in the mountains with 70% humidity, High thin clouds and NO wind at all! Dead Clam.. Very unusual for Middletown Park, Maryland.
I logged 10 micro-maxx flights in that short 2 1/2 hours. would have been more but I litterly burned out my only experimental piston launcher, before I got to fly some of my new micro models.
Great flights were finally had by all three size Nike-Smoke Scale models .281"dia , .375" and .448" the tiny 1: 58 .281" was out-of-sight for a few second on a MM-II motor..I've got to put a colored teflon streamer in that one
3 mocro PMC's were fun F-104 still needs a little work, X15 and F16XL flew well. Gliders.. OH man I had some pretty nice flights in dead air... a Large Oval wing BumbleFlea logged a 21 sce flight and my Micro Ivee's Arrow straight boost would have made a very long glide if not for a super tight CCW turn (too much clay on the wing tip) sprialing in a 12' circle still timed out at 26 seconds.
Than came the not so good flights... Micro Space Ship One's first flight on a MM-II motor off the piston was amazing Wow...Pow she was WAY up there..then ejection and OH NO seperation. the Nose cone with all whose tiny individual star decals came crashing into the woods by the creek with a thub... never to be seen again Body and streamer were recovered fine...now I must turn another nose..DRAT!!!!
Being forgetful sometimes I left my normal tie down thread home. So decided to use some helicopter elastic thread to hold down the elevator on my micro NOMAD RG...Very bad idea... apparently it did not hold the elevator down well enough... at lift off she did a very quck loop into the top of my van..destroying the model.. I got most of the parts back but never found the pod/pylon or nosecone.. That was also the end of the Piston which must have melted the Liquid electric tape used to insulate the contact tubes for the brass support tube. Insant dead short the fused the wires into a solid smoking mass on the TaperPaper PD test
But a great day to that point ... and I again learned something.. even if your experimenting make 2 of every thing! Yeah I now have 6 piston supports/wireways and plenty of support material in the box. Red thread is back in the box also
Sorry NO lift-off pics, they are just WAY to quick of the piston.. even with the camera on burst. heres a page of some stills.
I can't remember a more perfect flying weather. between 7:00am and about 9:30 the temp was in the low to mid 70's, kind of damp in the mountains with 70% humidity, High thin clouds and NO wind at all! Dead Clam.. Very unusual for Middletown Park, Maryland.
I logged 10 micro-maxx flights in that short 2 1/2 hours. would have been more but I litterly burned out my only experimental piston launcher, before I got to fly some of my new micro models.
Great flights were finally had by all three size Nike-Smoke Scale models .281"dia , .375" and .448" the tiny 1: 58 .281" was out-of-sight for a few second on a MM-II motor..I've got to put a colored teflon streamer in that one
3 mocro PMC's were fun F-104 still needs a little work, X15 and F16XL flew well. Gliders.. OH man I had some pretty nice flights in dead air... a Large Oval wing BumbleFlea logged a 21 sce flight and my Micro Ivee's Arrow straight boost would have made a very long glide if not for a super tight CCW turn (too much clay on the wing tip) sprialing in a 12' circle still timed out at 26 seconds. Than came the not so good flights... Micro Space Ship One's first flight on a MM-II motor off the piston was amazing Wow...Pow she was WAY up there..then ejection and OH NO seperation. the Nose cone with all whose tiny individual star decals came crashing into the woods by the creek with a thub... never to be seen again
Body and streamer were recovered fine...now I must turn another nose..DRAT!!!!Being forgetful sometimes I left my normal tie down thread home. So decided to use some helicopter elastic thread to hold down the elevator on my micro NOMAD RG...Very bad idea... apparently it did not hold the elevator down well enough... at lift off she did a very quck loop into the top of my van..destroying the model.. I got most of the parts back but never found the pod/pylon or nosecone.. That was also the end of the Piston which must have melted the Liquid electric tape used to insulate the contact tubes for the brass support tube. Insant dead short the fused the wires into a solid smoking mass on the TaperPaper PD test
But a great day to that point ... and I again learned something.. even if your experimenting make 2 of every thing! Yeah I now have 6 piston supports/wireways and plenty of support material in the box. Red thread is back in the box also
Sorry NO lift-off pics, they are just WAY to quick of the piston.. even with the camera on burst. heres a page of some stills.
