It's been a while y'all! Whelp, we went to Lakehurst and we flew things!
Yes, Canada's Dmytro Silin brought his own 50" span Unlimited along!
And so we got down to flying. Dima was only able to be there for the first weekend, but we had spectacular conditions and we flew. And we found out just how tough this can be.
Dima in particular folded his model up several times and came away unsuccessful in his effort to join the 40 minute club. He had it made on several flights but steering issues kept him from making it. His best was 37 minutes. He'll be back later this year for another go at it.
Regardless, this is a beautiful model. Dima is a true craftsman. He's actually done 40 minutes before, but it was a practice session many years ago and so wasn't an official contest flight.
Dima came away with a new Canadian Cat IV F1D record of 23:29 with his excellent new model:
Nick Ray did a spectacular 33 minutes in F1R for a new national record, but it came at a high cost. Whoopsies!
Don't worry, he's already got it fixed. And now he believes me about not winding near your plane.
I had an opportunity to scare the snot out of myself. This is my original Hourglass II cruising under the center catwalk about 25 minutes into a flight.
Unfortunately the motor blew less than 10 minutes later and it was on the ground at only 37 minutes. I also had two other flights of 39 minutes, once thanks to a poor climb, and once thanks to my tucking the prop 50' up in my umpteen botched steer.
Finally about 5 in the afternoon of day 2 I put mine up again to about 140' and pulled off a clean flight of 46:06, my first ever 40+ minute flight.
While my model was on its way down, Hope launched her Hourglass II production model for a spectacular climb straight to the center catwalk. Her climb ended only about 5' short of the girders, nearly 170' up. There was very little drift and only a quick nudge was required at the end of the flight to avoid a scrapped arresting cable (yes, like one from an aircraft carrier). Hope deadsticked in for a personal best of 35:57!
You may have noticed I haven't mentioned a thing about my big Hourglass III. Well... I found out my propellers weren't up to the task. I was stuck between that razorblade of a low enough pitch to get the model climbing well would tuck the blades in cruise, but a high enough pitch to prevent that required so much launch torque for a climb that the blades would flutter on launch. Uh...yeah...not good. I have a lot to learn. That said, there is video, and it will be forthcoming. Anyway, that's why I resorted to my backup.
So...that's the summary for our first weekend at Lakehurst. I'll throw up the second weekend's stuff later.
Here's a video to hold you over in the meantime: