Fun Flying During Mother’s Day

Fun Flying During Mother’s Day

On Mother’s Day, we convinced our mother to take us out to the park to fly R/C airplanes. We brought our E-Flite Valiant and our E-Flite Cherokee along with our grandparents, who had come to see us that morning. We flew Greg’s Cherokee first and had a great time zipping around with the Cherokee’s 4-cell (4S)-compatible motor. We did low passes, snap rolls, and scale flying, and we had smooth landings. However, once when Greg was setting up for a perfect landing, he accidentally came in way too fast at the wrong angle and almost smashed into a tree. At the last second, he quickly veered off the collision course, narrowly avoiding a crash. His troubles weren’t over though, because when he took off for his next flight, a flock of 20 or so birds, who were consumed in a territorial dogfight, almost became became Greg’s first bird strike. Greg then proceeded to open the throttle, and the birds, unable to keep up, were blown away in Greg’s propwash. Greg landed uneventfully, and except for some random vibrations of the propeller. Then it was Roy’s turn to fly.

Roy had brought his E-Flite Valiant, and he had an amazing time doing stunts and 2-foot takeoffs. The Short Take-Off and Landing (STOL) flying started when he realized that the rapidly-changing wind direction forced him to do his takeoff in the ten-or-so feet of dry grass before the deeper, muddy grass. After takeoff, Roy started practicing snap rolls, inverted flying, and 3D flying (stunt flying but at extreme angles of attack). He primarily focused on snap rolls, because the Valiant, when flying with 150% dual rates and 0% exponential on the control surfaces, has responsiveness rivaling that of purpose-built stunt planes. He flew around, doing stunts here and there, and when it was time to land, he asked our mom to take a picture of it right at touchdown. He, too, had a jittery landing approach and almost had a hard landing, but he straightened out and had a soft touchdown.

Right after flying, we figured out that the slight vibrations in the Cherokee were caused by one of the propeller blades having a sheared-off tip. We went to the hobby store near us and asked for a new propeller, but since they discontinued Greg’s specific model of Cherokee, propellers were harder to find. As of the writing of this post, we just found the correct propeller but don’t have it yet.