Mode Zero

Well almost
Being a flat lander, whenever the opportunity to do some sloping presents, I grab it

A family wedding in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney last weekend was such an opportunity, so I dug out my much flown foam wing built in the last century, washed the accumulated mouse poop & dirt off it, dropped in a 2.4gig Rx & new Rx battery, and got physched up. We arrived at our B&B late Friday arvo in howling winds and snow flurries which persisted to the wee small hours. Saturday morning was calm , would you believe, but the wind picked up in the afternoon as we had to head off to my niece's wedding, of course .

Sunday morning was glorious but again calm . I lingered in hope, even bought a lovely lunch for my wife, but there was no wind to speak of until we were well into our 4 hour drive home

Maybe next time............

Since arriving in New Zealand last January for my latest work project, I've joined the local Club and even had a few flights of "borrowed" models. Thanks to Brian_Z, I came into possession of an old PSS model, loosely based on the Fiat G9. Made of brown paper covered styrene foam with coreflute tail feathers and ailerons, it was painted and then covered with clear packaging tape. Controls are aileron & elevator, driven by a pair of old Futaba S133 standard size After a thorough check of the structure, hinges & RC, and CofG, dowels were added to enable the wings to be rubber-banded on. There were a few shop dings & bruising of the structure that required repairs. Then we were ready for the test flight.

The locals fly at a spectacular coastal site north of Wellington, called Whitireia Park, on Titahi Bay. When the north westerly blows, the lift is enormous! The next land is Australia >2500km west

Brian & I test flew the Fiat yesterday. The forecast was for 15-18km/hr, but Brian measured the wind at over 40km/hr!! Regardless, the maiden flight went well, even if only slow into wind


Great fun

I managed to get out for a slope fly a few weeks ago with a couple of mates.
Light Easterly so off to the sand dunes.

I finally got to remaiden the Little V after a few mods & it flies much better. Also flew the Blezjik Elf & a nice 3.2m molded sloper.
I also took the Reeds Impala but in my eternal wisdom, left the TX at home..........

The Victorians have their annual slope soaring festival every year in Jan so this year I did the 1070 km treck down for the week.
The wind wasn't ideal but still managed to fly every day.
Here's a 30 second clip of my flying the Veron Impala on one of Phil's reeds replica sets.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3A6AUygaVM

Entirely gratuitous pictures of Slope soaring in Tenerife. Model is a WL toys 959. It has the fly sky protocol and works well with a jumper lite tx. I’ve replaced the dead man switch with a button and using pascals emulator can fly as single channel. That said the conditions were nowhere near stable enough to fly it single channel proper – you can see that high up the humid air turns to cloud at a very exact height and in that picture quite a strong breeze. Other pictures were a good thousand plus feet soaring above the town. Mixture of light slope lift and thermals so not really standard single channel as the 959 flies quite fast. It has the advantage of a brushed motor pusher which is useful for getting out of trouble.

Very easy to fly single channel if you launch from the flat in low wind – throttle is obviously still proportional

To get plane into a suitcase I made a zigzag cut just in front of the RX which allows it to be Sellotape back together on arrival - same goes for the tailplane. Packs down easily into a small-ish suitcase Can also be carried easily in a small rucksack

"Nick, I have resized your pictures and rotated them as they were on the large side, Cheers Tobe "

_AL_ wrote: ↑22 Jan 2022, 01:54 The Victorians have their annual slope soaring festival every year in Jan so this year I did the 1070 km treck down for the week.
The wind wasn't ideal but still managed to fly every day.
Here's a 30 second clip of my flying the Veron Impala on one of Phil's reeds replica sets.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3A6AUygaVM

Like the video.....Dual hobby, slope soaring and Bee Keeping eh.

It's dairy farm country down there & with dairy farms comes lots of cow poo & with cow poo comes a gazillion flies.
The head mesh was the most important piece of kit for down there. Some amazing slopes though. I'm hoping to get down there again this year.

Looks a great site.

I miss flying at Otford, used to go every weekend back in the late 1980's early 1990's, the Aeromodeller magazine's Bluebottle was a fantastic slope flyer. https://outerzone.co.uk/plan_details.asp?ID=8281 plans on Outerzone.

Dave

Went sloping to Burton Dasset Country Park yesterday. Nice day, for November, but in the afternoon the landing circuit involved flying over, under, or 'through' a very low, bright sun, which was rather scary.

Burton Dasset isn't the best of slopes, but it works okay in a WSW wind, is not too far away for me, and has top parking (which now costs £3 though ). I didn't take my best glider, because I couldn't find the wing joiners but I probably wouldn't have flown it anyway.