I maidened the Stearman today, but more on that later.
For those few of you on the internet that don't know, I live in South Central. PA, that is. Early March in this area of the US of A is not what one would call pleasant. According to the weathermen, Meteorological Spring started two days ago. No one told that to the weather. Today, temps hovered around freezing, snow flurries drifted by, well, like snowflakes on a solid 15 mph wind.
Jesse, otherwise known as Pilot-294 on this forum, is home from his AFB base in Montana and we got together to fly today. Jesse had an issue, though. All of his "flying stuff" is in Montana. He texted me this morning stating he was going to go to one of our LHS's to "look." We know how that ends.
Jesse showed up with a shiny, new Flyzone FW-190 RTF, which he assembled in my old classroom at the middle school where I taught until moving to high school this year. I brought the following: Surfer (aka Bixler), Hellcat, Super Cub, Assassin Combat wing and my brand new, yet to fly Maxford USA Stearman. Three of those airplanes are wonderfully suited for flying in wind.
Pilot-294 flew first. He placed his brand new aircraft on the lumpy, squishy baseball infield. After waiting for the wind to be manageable, he pushed the throttle forward and climbed into the sky. She flew splendidly! This plane has plenty of speed and punch. After maybe 2 minutes of flight, he decided that he should land. We discussed landing direction while he was flying happily about. I recommended bringing it in straight down the first base line.
Jesse took the FW-190 an uncomfortable distance away (for me anyway) and lined up with the landing strip. He dropped the flaps and commented, "That slowed it way down." About 100 yards out, his plane was at treetop height - of REALLY tall trees. I thought, "hmmm." He nosed over, losing altitude. I almost said, "don't trade altitude for speed," but I refrained. I'm sure he was also refraining from offering good advice when I was landing my Stearman a bit later.
The FW came crabbing in, as it was landing in a quartering headwind. Three small children had to run for cover as the plane touched down - just a few feet from the backstop. The left landing gear collapsed and the plane skidded into the backstop. All-in-all a successful maiden in weather that was really not an intelligent choice for a maiden.
Despite that obvious fact, and the fact I had three other airplanes perfectly capable of ripping it up in that wind, I chose the less than intelligent option. I'll follow up with that in a bit.