FPV Sailplane ride

[makattack]

I went to my clubs' field (Davis Field in Sudbury, MA) when I had Friday off from work late last week (burning up unused vacation days before I lose them) and met Bob who walked up while I was connecting the wings to my Calypso. We were chatting. It was my first flight with this plane for the season, so my first flight was going to be a LOS test flight to make sure all was working ok. Bob mentioned he has a Radian, but didn't bring it to fly because he finds after every flight he's having to make repairs as he's still learning. I offered to hook the camera and FPV box goggles I usually bring with me to the field for when situations like this arise. I have an old AIO HD Camera/FPV VTX setup called a Sky HD01 that I can stick onto any medium to large sized plane. I don't even need to keep it charged up as I have a 5V BEC that can connect to a 3S balance port.

Anyway, he sat down and I handed him the goggles and flew around a little. I was lucky there was a bit of lift right in the middle of the field, and I could have stayed up far longer, but I didn't want to leave poor Bob under the goggles with me making constant turns!

As I made my landing approach, some dog walkers were finishing up their stroll through the park, and when I flew over their dogs, they gave a little chase. The dog owners laughed and yelled "lower, lower!" reminding my of David Windestal - I tried to entertain the dogs a bit by turning on the motor for a go around pass. As soon as the glider landed and stopped, they got bored and went chasing after each other.

As an idea of how ill prepared my kit was, the SDCard in the camera was only a 1GB card, I had in there for testing. That meant I had limited space, which is why the video I made below has a short clip that's in "HD"

Warning: there's quite a bit of porpoising going on, unintentionally, as I get used to the plane having not flown it for almost a year. I was over doing the elevators combined with figuring out how much of the flaps I needed to deploy (tied to my throttle stick).

Music by Eric Matyas
www.soundimage.org

 

[PsyBorg]

Nice day for flying huh.

You had me tensing up a time or two at the end thinking you were gonna eat the ground. Looks like a nice park to fly at. what are them 6 boxes outlined in the field? They look like maybe volleyball courts?

 

[makattack]

Heh heh, that's the great thing about those gliders! They are so stable that it's really easy to fly low and skim the ground. My one pucker moment was when I was flying towards the tall grass before the tree line and I knew I was going to hit the motor, but I was going downwind and was afraid I wouldn't be able to clear the trees, hence the steep banking turn that led me to fly over the "flight line." Those two white dogs you see towards the end running together were the ones I was flying low level to entertain. Probably took way too many risks just to have fun with them, particularly as I overflew their owners.

Yes, I love flying at this field. Even though it's a good 40 minute drive away, it's well worth it for even just an hour of flying despite spending more time in the car getting to and from the field. Those lines mark the multiple tyke soccer fields for the soccer league that plays there in the afternoons on weekends. It's a mixed use field, so the RC club (Charles River Radio Controllers/CRRC) gets it in the mornings until about 11am. At 11am, the coaches, kids, and parents start showing up and the winches start getting broken down and stowed and the planes land. It opens up at about 3/4pm again for flight. Kind of naturally works out as the winds usually pickup and die down again around those times.

The tall grass gets mowed by a farmer who harvests it for hay, who I believe mows the playing (and our flying) fields for the town free or a discounted price. The town did at one point try to redevelop the field into little league baseball fields and ran into opposition from the current eclectic group of users: dog owners, CRRC, soccer league, model rocketeers, farmer, hunters, and locals who didn't want more traffic and construction on the field. Oh the woods surrounding the field is popular during hunting season and our club meetings usually involve reminders to members that if your plane gets lost in the woods, make sure you wear high visibility gear and don't go randomly walking through them. We've been fortunate to have had hunters find a few of those lost planes and return them to the original owner for those that were labeled with contact details. The club has gotten a few mystery returns with no markings as well.