No 43
September 8, 2001
Hi
friends,
Following
a series of comparatively minor crashes with my ATS Kite, its flying
characteristics were nowhere near as sweet and docile as they had been.
In carrying out the repairs, I guess I had not managed to re-set the
control surfaces back to their previous neutral positions and so I was
finding I was having to put in quite a bit of sub-trim to achieve
anything like I had before. In particular, though, the plane had a
marked tendency to climb, even with bags of trim in and the throttle
well back. It was certainly nowhere near as nice to fly, and I felt I
had taken a step or two back in my slow progress towards taking my 'A'
test.
After
some pretty abysmal flying at the field recently (and scaring the
day-lights out of poor Chris who was standing by!), Gordon kindly went
over all the settings with me, taking out all the sub-trim and
mechanically re-setting the neutral positions before a bit of fine-tuning with the sub-trim. What a difference! The plane was back to its
previous extremely stable self and was perfectly happy to fly around the
sky straight and level with both hands off the sticks, as demonstrated
to me by Gordon. The best bit was to watch Gordon line her up for a
landing, cut the throttle at a fair height on approach and with hands
off the sticks just let the
model land itself with the undercarriage touching down as gentle as you
like; she came down the glide slope as if we had ILS on the field!
 When
I mentioned my computer problems on the issue before last, I finished
off by saying, admittedly somewhat wistfully, "Things can only get better . . . can't they?"
Well, they didn't! The replacement machine demonstrated precisely the same
problems from the moment it was powered up, before I put a singe byte of my own
software on. The supplier could not correct the problem nor find its cause, and I
was not prepared to try yet another system from them. Result -
money refunded! In order to get the last issue up on the web and get going on
this one, I had to borrow back my previous equipment, which I had passed on
to the family. I record my special thanks to Tim and my grandchildren, Rachel
and Samuel, for lending it to me, whilst waiting for delivery of yet another
system from a different supplier. I am now the proud owner of a Dell
Dimension 8100 and, for the moment at least, a happy chappie once again, as you
can see above!
Regards to all,
 |
I have no firm record of
the source of the lovely atmospheric picture on the opening screen, but
I believe it came from the site of a club called the Nevada Soarers and
features a scale glider that might be called an Extreme 64. If anyone
recognises the picture, please let me know so that I can acknowledge it
properly. Click the minipic on the left to return to the opening
screen and the thumbnail on the right for a full-screen view of
the original picture.
|
 |
 |
If you are not already receiving a reminder
each time a new issue of ModelFlight is published every two weeks but
would like to do so, please click on the post-box and send me an
e-mail giving your name and simply saying "reminder" and I will be very
pleased to add you to
my e-mailing list. |
ModelFlight
Reg Heath
·
60 South View
Gardens ·
Andover ·
Hants ·
SP10 2AQ ·
UK
|
