The Good Ship Easystar and other adventures

Been a while since a post so there's a bit of ground to cover.

On the rotary front I have now had two successful nose in hovers with the TREX - the altitude was pretty higher (5 metres or so) so I was giving myself some margin for error, but I've done it, and the second time was easier than the first, and hopefully it will keep on getting easier.

In other news I now have a Minium Cessna. These cute little 16g RC planes are amazing. Having done a bit of indoor flying now I would have thought getting a scale model that looks this good, and fly this well would be impossible. Bit pricey but it does include everything.

On the topic of indoor flying, it was almost the end of the Cessna. I took her down to nitrodude's indoor night last Saturday having purpose bought her that afternoon. Having had a go on Ground Dancer's I was happy I could handle her, and taxied out. She completed a half circuit before finding the one environment which the superlight plane doesn't automatically survive without problem - the spinning blades of a rotary aircraft. She was brought down with some massive gashes in her wings, busted prop and for a few moments I though she was busted for good. But with a bit of tape, and a prop from another model (thanks Jan) was able to have a number of good circuits indoors with her.

I've also been able to fly her in the street outside which is kind of mad. I just step outside and launch her. If she gets into trouble I just cut the power. She landed on top of one of the bushes out the front the other night.

Have a number of new RC projects on the way. Have grabbed some stuff from Richard Woods at Aussieflight including a Cow warbird (Corsair) which I'm looking forward to seeing. I've also got an Easybox coming from Paul Daniels at NQRC. I'm planning to set that up for indoor flight - hopefully I can build it light enough to make that practical. Finally I've also grabbed a new flycameone 2 from The Mongrel. However, here's the thing - all of these purchases failed to arrive by the end of the week. What happened next was not my fault - you know what they say - the Devil makes work for idle hands...

Here's a hint:

Yes - for some time I have been thinking about how to set the easystar up for amphibious operations. The big long smooth bottom fuselage seems perfect to float in the water (notwithstanding the holes I drilled in the fuse for cooling).

So - I used some duct tape to seal the bottom of the fuselage, and built some really dodgy floats to hold the wing tips out of the water. I wasn't really interested in a particulalry challenging engineering operation, and just wanted to quickly trial the ideal, and decided to velcro the supports to the wing.

So after flying down at Kambah this morning the crew that were about went down to Lake Tuggeranong to try out the amphibious easy star.

Looked good from the start - she floated at almost eactly the height I had planned for and the floats were beautifully holding the wing tips level above the water. The Mongrel (who was flying with me today) was shaking his head about the float supports (they were certainly dodgy but I thought they would make it for a trial.

Here's the youtube of the mornings flying - the Amphibious Easystar is at the end.



So after the flooding you see at the end of the vid there was some speculation that the ESC or RX was fried, but it seemed to get better once it dried off - I haven't retested, but I think they are okay. I'm glad I have the video of the failed take off. Hopefully it will help me figure out what went wrong.

Here's another vid with some flying buddies including ground dancer with his Minimum Cessna (he's the one that convinced me to buy one).



Okay - gotta go.