Heart stopping moments…

I had another great flight with the Extra today. I managed loops, rolls and inverted flight. I even tried a knife-edge but this didn’t work so well because I haven’t increased the rudder motion after reducing it in an attempt to make the aircraft controllable on the ground.

I did have one heart stopping moment when, after turning too sharply onto finals and with the speed too low, the aircraft simply fell out of the sky and in between the trees. By some miracle it missed all of them (the spaces between them were not more than 3m big), leveled the wings and pointed its nose at the sky. Seeing this, I decided to apply full throttle and to my absolute amazement it climbed easily back into the sky and out from between the trees.

A lucky escape from a classic mistake!

 

First flight

My extra has finally taken to the skies, albeit using a slightly unorthodox launch technique for this type of aircraft. It seemed that no matter how hard I tried, I simply could not keep in going in a straight line on the ground for long enough to get it into the air.

So, after three attempts, one propeller and one set of repairs, I tried hand launching it…

which, after one heart stopping moment of involving a close encounter with a bush, worked very well. The aircraft required some fairly substantial trimming and it flies really fast.

After the first flight, I trimmed the center positions of all the controls and the second flight was a significant improvement. Unfortunately the landings still need work and I broke the propeller on my second landing but there was no other damage.  During the second flight I also tried some loops and rolls which worked although the roll rate is quite slow. I think that this model will be good fun and that the performance will be good once I learn to fly it properly.

Janita did a great job as the photographer.