Today was the *third* day I'd taken the Elder up to the field, hoping to
get it into the air, and it didn't seem like a bad day at all. Wind sorta strongish, but not /too/ strong, gusty, but not /too/ gusty, and the sky reasonably clear, with some patchy cloud to give a background to the
aircraft in the sky. I set her up and fuelled her.
Rudy and David were the only others present, and we sat around talking
about politics and pussy for a long while, but eventually, I decided that
the waiting was over, so I asked them to assist me on the ground, and we
got her started and tuned. Then one of the lads took her out for me, and
I opened up the throttle.
She turned hard left and stuck her face into the long grass at the side of
the strip, stalling the engine. This with full *right* rudder on the
tranny! I then selected high-rates rudder, and after a restart, I tried again. This time, I gradually advanced the throttle and before I know it (well under full throttle) she climbed away and immediately began a left
turn. I put in a lot of right rudder and right aileron, but still allowed
her to turn left, and as she completed a left-hand circuit, I was busy
pushing the trim levers as hard as I could. It took a couple of circuits,
but I finally got her where she was flying straight.
She flew slowly, as befits a machine of her supposed vintage! (The Elder
is *not* a model of an old aircraft, it is actually a *new* design, but deliberately made to look like a vintage aircraft.) The detailing makes
for a high drag coefficient, so slow flight is the norm, but she flies
very positively, with the Saito swinging a 12x7 prop at half throttle.
When you cut the throttle, all the drag makes her descend steeply, so you wouldn't want her to go dead-stick with much distance to travel back to
the strip! But I cut the throttle to idle, and the Saito ran beautifully, without a single hesitation, despite being mounted in an inverted configuration.
This is no aerobat; no racer, but she is attractive in the air, and is interesting to fly. She flew for 20 minutes on a half-tank of fuel, and I gave Rudy five minutes on the sticks to see what he thought -- he approved.
She was up for a long time, and David took a buncha photos. Have a look
and see:
http://www.anjo.com/rc/aircraft/elder/#flying
The first of these is a truly great photo, especially as you can't see how tight my butt was clenched, bringing her in *this* close on a first
flight. But it flies so well at low throttle, I was able to put her where David could take this shot. We actually took 71 photographs, and I have
put the best 15 of these (numbered 01-15) on the site, but only linked in
five of them on the page.
After 20 minutes, I made an approach, and it came over the threshold at literally walking pace or less, and slowly settled on to the ground as
gently as can be. Tried to turn it on the ground and taxi back, but I
quickly realised that wasn't going to happen. Tail-skid! Oh well, I
can't really complain.
I fully expected it to come off the ground and immediately roll in and
self destruct. Instead I ended up with an attractive, interesting
aircraft to play with, until Rudy takes it down with his Chris Foss
Buzz-saw! :-) It isn't *anything* like the Seabee... but is that a bad thing?
---
þ Synchronet þ Made of wood and glue, but mostly glue!