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.

some videos of the plane below

Did I mention it was fast?

Reallyfast

But at least it is still in one piece



By the way, that is my dad breathing hard into the camera. I, of course, was completely calm and in control. . .

Noch ein Flugzeug!

Here is the latest attempt to put together a pylon racer that will be able to compete this year. The last two I built have glow-powered engines. I have had a little trouble keeping those engines running This one will compete in the speed 200 class. The pictures are from its maiden flight Saturday morning. The plane feels fast and the first flight was really hairy until I was able to trim it out for level flight. Even at 1/4 throttle, it was almost all I could handle. I landed and adjusted the elevator to move only half as much as it did on the first flight. The reduced twitchiness was very welcome.
The motor is a 1900Kv Turnigy brushless outrunner motor. I am using 1350 mAh 3-cell lithium-polymer batteries--the same type as is used in cell phones, except with a higher discharge rate. the propeller is 6.5" Graupner propeller (made in Germany!). As you can see, I have decorated it with the German colors. The speed controller (a computer chip that controls the battery-motor interface and acts as a throttle) can be programmed to play various songs when it is powered up and ready to fly. In keeping with the German theme, I set it to play Beethoven's Ode to Joy. I don't think many of the people I fly with will get the joke.
The design is my own, although I took a lot of cues from others that are also flying. The plane has a V-tail and a slightly forward-swept main wing. It feels really fast, although I am not sure exactly how fast. Others who have similar designs have clocked their planes at between 100-110 miles per hour. I need to get used to flying at this speed at about 20 feet off the ground. This last picture is my favorite.

Ein Flugzeug!

Here is one of the things I have been doing this summer.
When I was a student at BYU, I started participating in 1/2A pylon races with the Utah Valley Aeromodelers. I managed to crash my plane shortly before leaving for Cincinnati, and none of the clubs I have been associated with since then in Ohio, Missouri, or Texas have done any racing.
But when I got back to Utah, I eventually decided (this summer) to look back into the racing. When I drove up to the sod farm in eagle mountain where the races were, I saw four planes in the air, and I could feel my adrenaline levels start to rise, and I knew I had to get back into it. It is, as one of the more colorful guys in the club puts it "maybe the most fun you can have with your clothes on." That might be a bit of an exaggeration, but it is an insane amount of fun. Part of the enjoyment for me is designing and building the planes from scratch, tweaking the designs of others to get just a little bit faster or better flying than the next guy.


As you can see, I have covered my plane to look like the thunderbirds, with a few modifications to account for the shape of the wing. I am really happy with how it looks. If you didn't take the time to read the rules I linked to, 1/2 A pylon races involves flying home-built remote controlled airplanes around a course made up of three pylons. Each race is ten laps, with a penalty lap if you cut inside one of the pylons. The engine can only be .049 cubic inch displacement, and the wing needs to have an area of at least 200 square inches. That is about it for rules. I am really looking forward to seeing how this one flies.


















Here are a few more pictures:
This one is my with my oldest son, who sometimes shares my interest in airplanes, and will probably learn to fly before too long.







This picture shows one feature unique to my plane, the up-turned wing tips. I have no idea if it will help the flight or not, but they look cool, even if they were a real pain to cover. The markings are waterslip decals printed from my computer onto a special decal paper that you then spray with clear spray paint to protect the ink. This allows me to create custom decals in any size that I need. I hope the exhaust from the engine doesn't cause them to come off on the first flight.

Once I have flown, I will post an update on how well it flies.

Update: Having read my one reader's blog entry on hunting, I have to add that building a good airplane is a lot like writing too, in that it provides an outlet for my obsessive-compulsive need for attention to detail, the drive for exact precision and complete perfection. For instance, if you look at the bottom view (the one with the birds wings on it) you will notice that one wing is just slightly closer to the trailing edge than the other so that the markings are not quite symmetrical. This drive me batty, even though no one else will notice. But I know.
Building an airplane is exactly not like writing, however, in that I almost always know how I want the plane to turn out before I start. Writing is not like that for me.