Test flying at Drymen Bridge.

Since the competition season has started there have been 7 thermal competitions scheduled to date.  These have been a mixture of F5j, ALES and winch classes. Only 3 of these have taken place and all 3 were electric launch. 

The forecast was for a rare 'good day' on the 24 May so I arranged to meet Rick and son Josh at Drymen for a bit of a testing session with winch and electric models. Thankfully the forecast held and a great days testing was had. 

I am getting the hang of winch launches, the franken-tracker (my mish mash Tracker 100) worked well and only required a bit of down trim to get flying nicely. I was able to get a number of good flights and even the flights with no lift still managed reasonable air time. I had a couple of flights with times well over the required 12min fly-off time for 100s class. Fingers crossed for similar in the remaining competitions! :)

Next model flown was the top model pegasus which i got as an airframe a motor deal. I completed the servo/esc and set up over the past few weeks. It is typical that no matter how well you plan you always end up with a last minute rush. I only finished balancing and setting up flight modes the night before. 

Rick gave it a test chuck and off it floated. It went smoothly and was heading towards the fence at the edge of the field. I throttled up and off it went at a nice climb angle. No issues to report on the set up, it flew nicely and I was instantly comfortable in how it flew. I had a few more flights with it throughout the day. No doubt I will carry out some minor tweaks as I learn how it flys. The only thing on the list so far is a couple of slightly heavier batteries. I had a to add 25g to achieve balance with the packs I have. Some 3s 1000 or 1300 packs with a 35c+ rating to be ordered. 

The last model for testing and flying was the Claymore (aka bumble bee). It is a secondhand model produced by Rick @ Lite Flite. I have only flown it at a few comps this year, I managed to win a round with it but the rest of the flights have been ok but not great. I was ideally going to tweak it so that I was more comfortable flying it. I have a tendency to over control at times and I was hoping to adjust so it was less susceptible to harsh inputs. It is also dropping the nose on turns so I was hoping to adjust the differential and tweak the balance point to keep it more settled. 

I sat in front of the model with battery an altis in hand ready to connect up only to discover that some fanny had left the ESC in the house. :( No flying for this model today.

All in all a good day flying a more practice under my belt. I am missing the next 2 competitions but lets hope there are more good practice days over the coming months before the nationals competitions.