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Video taken slope soaring at Burton Dassett.

The wind direction was SSW and the speed was moderate, I`m guessing 15-20 mph.

When flying from here there is some turbulence which you do not get when flying from a coastal site such as the Great Orme, you can see the difference if you watch my last video.

I would like some advice please, you will notice that when the model is inverted it starts to nod, I don`t understand why this is so, C of G is correct. Your thoughts on this are welcome.

The yellow plane you can see belongs to Barry.

A few club members visited the Great Orme last week, the winds were from a south easterly direction so we flew from the Ski Slope site which was new to us, here is a short video.

You will find that most model aviators, at the end of a wonderful days flying as the shadows grow longer, will at some point have an overwhelming urge to stand on the river bank with a fishing pole in their hand

Had the opportunity to have a fly in Hillfield park the other day, nice big area to fly in marred only by the fact the public can walk up to you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_bkJbMyyS4

 

I have a brother in the Navy and by luck he set up home in the sunny town of Weymouth. Now every summer we try to get a few days down there to visit and hearing the Red Arrows were displaying at the Carnival we made a special effort to get there for the display.

The town was packed with tens of thousands of people on the beach. 14:00 saw a display of vintage Great War planes who put on a display so far offshore that it was hard to make out what was what and TBH the photos I took turned out pretty poor. We worked our way down the Esplanade and as we had Billie dog with us we had to head for the end of the beach which turned out to be the perfect place for the display when the turned up in a burst of colour over the beach all subsequent  manoeuvres were taking place practically overhead.

I’ve seen the reds numerous times over the years but I have to say that this was by far and away the best I’ve every see. Puts a lump in your throat, ‘Best of British’ and all that. The climax was a heart and arrow which you have to see to believe and worth a look on youtube.

Anyway, I managed to get a few good photos and heres the pic of them. Off to see the three Lancasters together at the Licolnshire Aviation Heritage trust. If you don’t know about this then have a look on their website http://www.lincsaviation.co.uk/. A private funded team are working on the restoration of a Lancaster that in now nearly airworthy and if successful will be one of only 3 airlorthy Lancs and next Sunday their all together for the first time. The sound of 12 Merlins together should be something else.

 

Since I’ve had the Decathlon it has never really flown “right” for one reason or another, had to rebuild the motor mount twice, fix the battery bay, In the end the wing support struts gave up, and as that would mean stripping all the covering off the wings to fix I though why not fly it in the 30mph gusts we were expecting and if it crashes then we can just have a good laugh about it, long as no-one gets hurt it’s all good.

The plane takes off as normal, and to my amazement  actually handles the wind beautifully…. I just couldn’t believe it, it was flying great in the wind.

So Mr Chris and I came up with the idea of sticking the FPV gear on it, “What could possibly go wrong?”

Well I’ll tell you, when you get blown sideways it gives you the impression your turning…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wl_ExAz9RQ8

And then you get too far away for anyone to help and you crash, so we had to go on a long walk, many thanks to all those that helped, you were great chaps 🙂
How far away did it end up? well…

Quite a way, the white arrow is roughly where the strip is, and the red dot where the plane was found.

And how did the plane look when it got back?

At least most of the electrics were in one piece.

Despite everything it was still a great days flying, loads of fun, and now we have some kindling to try out the log burner 🙂

The general gist to how this came about was a small conversation between myself and Mr Chris one Tuesday not so long ago…

Coming up the field tonight I asked?

No said Mr Chris

Not to worry then says I, hopefully catch you Sunday

Great said Mr Chris, get some photos of plane silhouettes while your there tonight for the blog site says he

Erm… okay says I.

 

So here they are…

The photos are of my Fournier RF5, and taken by Tracey 🙂

 

This is how not to land a glider, my first approach is to high and as I loose height the models speed increases and I overshoot the landing area, so I decided to abort and go around again.

The second attempt is no better, still to high, this time I try to loose height to close to the landing area I also briefly loose sight as the model goes behind me, the result is a crappy landing.

No damage was done to property or model while filming this video :-).