New Field

The new field is great place to fly both electric as well as gas. Impressed with Glens landings on the grass. He did a very nice job with his P-51 scale flights. Which is pretty unusual for Crazy Glen. Wasn't much for prop noise. It sounds so cool though! Cant wait to get something in the air there...so many options for landing.

New Flying Spot

Tonight we scoped out a new park in Howard and found a great flying spot. Present were Kip, Kris, Glenn and Bill.

Spring Green Park

This is a village park which we found on satellite photos. It turned out to be a great place to fly. Glenn flew the electric P-51. I flew the slow stick, rebuilt Tigermoth and a P-47. A beautiful, calm evening.

July 22, 2009 Midair collision

A warm summer night with mild wind. We met at Kevin's for "Electric Night" along with some newcomers, Jerry and the "Sarge". Kip flew his EFlight P-47 and I was flying a vintage GWS Tigermoth. We began a deadly game of cat and mouse. The P-47 won this round with a spectacular midair collision. My Tigermoth was sliced up by the prop of the P-47. The Tigermoth tumbled down into the wheat while Kip managed a deadstick back to base. After examining the wreckage I decided this Tigermoth will be back in the air tomorrow with the help of some epoxy and Spackle.

Glenn flew the electrified Nitroplanes P-51. The sun was low in the sky and planes were getting harder to see. Glenn did a number of high speed flybys, inverted flight and various other stunts. At one point the P-51 disappeared behind the house surely headed for the ground. Suddenly the P-51 appeared above the horizon again, setting up for the final approach. Only Crazy Glenn could get away with that one.

Jerry and the Sarge flew a couple of Spads designed from plans found on (www.spadtothebone.com). These things are made from corrugated plastic and drain spouts. For about $12 they constructed very functional aircraft. Another nice addition to UncontrolledFlight.

We ended the night with a burger and beer at the the new Wouters Sport Bar.

July 18, 2009 Warbirds over Abrams

Saturday was a perfect day at the flying field. Glenn, Kip, Kris, Joel, Nick Jared and myself spent the day either flying, watching or taking video. Glenn received his new Hawker Hurricane that I picked up at Northern Hobbies on my way to the field. We flew a variety of planes but the highlight of the day was formation flying with 3 P-51's. I used my "FlyCam One 2" positioned facing the rear of my plane to capture aerial video of the other two birds. I am in the process of editing the video but there are a couple of sections where Glenn's plane is so close you can read the writing on it. Kris pulls off some barrel rolls in view of the aerial camera.

No real crashes occurred Saturday but there were a few dead stick landings in the wheat field. Kris' Extra experienced a burn out but he brought it down gently. Glenn's electrified P-51 had some sort of electrical problem but he too was able to drop it down in the wheat. Jared made the trip and retrieved the plane. I had the camera attached to the bottom of the wing so we got some really great high speed flyby's.

Kip showed up and ran the camera for a bit. Nick showed up for a while and flew his Mini Titan. As usual he dazzled us with a bit of 3D helicopter flight. I did get the Superstar and the F-4 Phantom airborne. Great flights but a tough landing for the Superstar ended up with bent landing gear. By the end of the day I had flow 8 missions, 2 short of my goal for the day but considering all the video and action I was more than satisfied. The day ended with a campfire at my house.

All in all a great day for the UncontrolledFlight guys.

Flying at Kevin's July 18th

We will be at Kevin's airfield on July 18th. I will be flying the electric Superstar , Glow powered P-51 and the TREX. The weather promises to be decent. 8-10 mph winds and temps in the 60's.

July 11 new website launched

The www.Uncontrolledflight.com website has been totally revamped. I locked myself in the basement until I learned how to use Dreamweaver. As my skills grow so will the website. Checkout our new trailer video on the website and on YouTube. Our YouTube channel is rustyz123.

TREX crashes causing LIPO fire

On July 4th I attended a rib cookout at Kips. I was entertaining the guests with my TREX and all was going fine until Glenn noticed the blades were out of track. Suddenly the TREX was hurled to the ground. I believe The crash was the result of a broken blade grip. This would explain why the blades went out of track right before the crash. In hindsight I should have landed as soon as that problem was detected but I thought it just needed adjustment. When the blade grip let go, one of the blades apparently reversed pitch, slamming the TREX into the ground. As the blade rotated it cut through the beautiful Hughes fiberglass fuselage and sliced open the 2500 MAH lipo. The lipo flew across the road, and one cell emitted a small flame and then lots of smoke. The other 2 cells were salvaged by Glenn. The TREX needed a rebuilt head. My fancy fusalage was scrapped and now I am back to the stock one.

Cause: This TREX has been upgraded with a Scorpion motor and a larger pinion gear. The result is an extremely fast head speed.

Lesson learned: If you are going to run the head speed higher than stock, use metal blade grips. The plastic ones can't take it.