Two posts in one night

Here is what I have been working on in my free time over the last 6 months. the biplane is scratch built to my own plans. It started out as a sketch on the back of a poster that I then converted to working plans with a CAD program on my computer. I cut everything out (there are LOT of ribs with two wings), built up the frame over the plans and made the tail and wings.


The problem was, the nose way too long and there was no way it would have balanced without a lot of extra weight in the tail. So I chopped it--even though it is hard to tell from the next pictures. If you look close, there are three holes cut out in the nose of the first picture, and only two in the second.
By the way, I cut all those holes in the landing gear too. That was fun.

To show off all the beautiful frame work, I covered it with translucent covering. here is the finished product:

But wait--there's more! Okay, not such a big surprise for those that already know about this project, but since I have alienated all of those people by not posting forever, only complete strangers will ever see this posting, and you, my new, strange friends have no idea what I am talking about. So here it is. . .



Drum roll, please. . .



a little more suspense . . .




It has lights!!! (the soldering was a real bear. Thanks Jon, for the help.)
but it looks cool under the Christmas tree. It should be really visible for night flying--the original intent of the design. I am sure almost no one cares, but it was a lot of fun to design and build. I sure hope it flies.

RIP

Remember that really fast plane from earlier in the year? Well it saw its end on the last weekend of racing this year. Spectacularly. I lost control around the first turn of the first heat. I am pretty sure my aileron servo stripped out. The only other possibility is maybe the antenna broke loose and so when it got out a ways, It lost the signal. Either way, the aircraft quickly turned into a 100mph lawn dart.Here you can see the nose buried about 4 inches deep into the sod. Battery pack, receiver and 3 of 4 servos seem to be a complete loss. Surprisingly, I think the motor itself survived. This is us digging it out.

CUPRA November Pylon Race - Jeff Packer's Crash from Jon Finch on Vimeo.

These are the people that I fly with. Generally a very generous and fun group. Next race is in March, and I already have ideas to make the next one faster.

After 5 years. . .

Let me take you back 5 years (I am watching Back to the future right now, so this kind of fits) We had just moved to Missouri, and I finally had space for the Mustang I had built before I left for graduate school in Ohio. As usual it needed some repairs. I took my son out with me when it was finally ready. It was a little cold, but that hardly matters when you are flying. I fired up the engine, and checked everything out and taxied out onto our grass runway, took a deep breath, and began my takeoff run. Ten feet into the air, the engine killed on me. The resulting "hard" landing put the gear up through the top of the wing. My son's compassionate response? "Can we go home now Dad?"

When we got back to Utah, I finally got around to finishing the rebuilt wing. Then it was a matter of waiting until my own father could be there to watch.-- I got tired of waiting for that, so I took it out to fly again today, just five years after its last flight. The weather was perfect. The engine was running great. The takeoff, well, the takeoff was very smooth.





. . . Until the throttle stopped responding that is. I had to fly around until the engine decided to stop, which was sooner than it should have been, so I have some more work to do and then try to land it dead-stick, without power. Mustangs don't like that, by the way.

Luckily the landing went as well as can be expected. There is some work to be done, but not too serious, if I can figure out the vibration problem.