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Following the development of a new fuselage over the winter and the addition of a camera and transmitter, the Riot has now gained a Eagle Tree Vector control unit and GPS/compass. So for those interested in this technology and to demonstrate my inability to fly in straight lines I have attached some data outputs from the Vector. The circling on the right of the Google screen dump is the plane in loiter mode whilst I took off my head set (cardboard box with LCD screen fitted) and put on my glasses  so I could land, a little more practice is required before landing in FPV…

Note: all data in English Units

A key learning point from the day was the criticality of wing incidence, my Riot was not the easiest of plane to fly which I thought was due to the CoG being 15mm further back than the maximum recommended in the in the Riot manual. So I moved this forward for the first flight of the day and it made negligible difference, so I tried packing the trailing edge, this made it worse still, so I put the CoG back to my original setting and packed the leading edge of the wings by 4mm and this transformed the characteristics for the better.

Maiden flight of Polaris ( Thanks John ) in and above Loch Lochinvar. Wind onshore. A bit choppy. Didn’t need rescue boat ! Second flight a bit later in and above Loch Ken. Still no need for rescue boat. Tried to add videos but they are too large.

Lovely place to fly.

Updated by Chris to put the video’s into the post (just paste the youtube URL, the blog will do the rest, but it doesn’t work in comments sorry)

Sea trials of the mk1. rescue boat. Attending Dave Tom WW and Robert. Unfortunately nothing to rescue. WW refused use of his cycle helmet, which would have been ideal. Some photos enclosed, would have been more but WW broke Pat’s camera. Other photos by Tom.

For those who do a spot of slope soaring, these are my initial pictures of my latest experiment – 3.75m glider using glassfibre wings and balsa for rest of the construction.  If it doesn’t fly, it will be a big crash…

the BFG development is now ready to test, all we want is a nice westerly and a visit to Pole Cottage…

Sorry about the orientation of pictures, rotate does not seem to work on the blog

Thought some of you may be interested in the latest winter project, its ready for the initial ‘hops’

Hope everyone had a good day at Cleeve Hill.

Burton Dassett was awful.

No wind.

Rained all day.

No flying.

Bad sunburn.

All planes smashed.

I will come with you next time, if invited.

Robert

Thanks for all the excellent launches today Mel.

We had a good day at Burton Dassett. Mel Launched the Half Pipe and the Strega and the Precious. All really heavy ! And they were such good launches that nothing was broken. (No need to tell Barry that the Strega is flying again).

Launched the Alula Trek myself. Not very heavy !

Robert

Always wanting to try something new in this wonderful hobby I decided to get myself a Durafly auto G2 and try flying an autogyro.

First I tried to find as many reviews and comments from people who had already flown one, the general consensus was easy to fly as long as there is a nice gentle wind and you don’t make any sharp turns.

I also found out that spinning up the main rotor can strip the gears if put on a switch, so decided to put mine on the dial so it can be ran up gently, this also had the added bonus that I didn’t have to wait for the wind to run the rotor up to full speed.

Thanks to Mr Chris we can witness the first flight in the attached video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JD2-B3oOEF8

Have to admit taking it nice and steady it was very easy to fly, landing was the only problem as the wind kept dropping off then picking up so had to spin up the main rotor again not a good idea in the middle of a final approach. Lesson learned though should fly much better with a gentle breeze.

Spare rotor blades are on there way, looking forward to trying again 🙂