Memorial Day '19 - Several Seaplanes!

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This is a bit of a pre-post, but we are gearing up for Memorial Day weekend! New planes built and painted!



It's going to be myself, my neighbor buddy, and our fathers at a lake in Minnesota. Assuming we can figure out how to transport them all, we will have 8 seaplanes to fly. On floats: Cub, TimberX, Timber UMX, FT Scout. Seaplanes: FT Sea Duck, Hydro Extreme, FT Sea Angel, Sea Wind. The Sea Duck is built around FPV + iNav, and we have a pair of waterproofed AIO cameras as well. FPV on seaplanes is awesome if you haven't tried it.

Will post more photos/videos on Monday.

 

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Stage 2 complete. Transporting 9 planes and two adults in a Honda Fit. Managed to fit all of our planes into the car while supporting their weight on the other luggage and not the planes below them in the stack (mostly). Arrived 200 miles away with minor paint scuffing.


(/me hums Tetris music)

 

[Grifflyer]

Cool!! I'd be too afraid to put my FPV camera over water

If you don't mind me asking, what part of MN are you in?

 

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Well, the first casualty was the Hydro Extreme. It flies smooth (ish), but has a really funny stall. I flopped it over on a takeoff, and had to do some mild repairs and reinforcements.

The Sea Angel buries it's nose and won't take off. We need to look into how to fix that.

After half a dozen flights, we plowed my Dad's brand new Sea Duck into the water. I convinced him that he should try it FPV. (He's only done FPV 2-3 times before) I was watching the DVR screen instead of being a good spotter and let him fly behind the trees to the side of us. The timeout on the fail safe was set to long and it didn't have enough time to pull out of the dive from 50M. From the angle of the damage, you could tell it tried valiantly though. Smushed the nose real good, and cracked the wing slightly. It should be fixable by building a new fuselage, but not this weekend. :-\ We got some good footage before that though (Ignoring the crappy reception on my DVR antenna):

Cool!! I'd be too afraid to put my FPV camera over water

If you don't mind me asking, what part of MN are you in?

Everything has a liberal application of conformal silicone coating on it. Alternatively, don't ever crash! I live just south of St. Paul, but the lake place is kinda between Detroit Lakes and Fargo.

 

[Grifflyer]

Well, the first casualty was the Hydro Extreme. It flies smooth (ish), but has a really funny stall. I flopped it over on a takeoff, and had to do some mild repairs and reinforcements.

The Sea Angel buries it's nose and won't take off. We need to look into how to fix that.

After half a dozen flights, we plowed my Dad's brand new Sea Duck into the water. I convinced him that he should try it FPV. (He's only done FPV 2-3 times before) I was watching the DVR screen instead of being a good spotter and let him fly behind the trees to the side of us. The timeout on the fail safe was set to long and it didn't have enough time to pull out of the dive from 50M. From the angle of the damage, you could tell it tried valiantly though. Smushed the nose real good, and cracked the wing slightly. It should be fixable by building a new fuselage, but not this weekend. :-\ We got some good footage before that though (Ignoring the crappy reception on my DVR antenna):

View attachment 132109

Everything has a liberal application of conformal silicone coating on it. Alternatively, don't ever crash! I live just south of St. Paul, but the lake place is kinda between Detroit Lakes and Fargo.

That's some nice scenery for FPV, I hope you can get your planes fixed!!!

I'm located just west of St. Paul.

 

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More photos!

I should make a video with all the clips from the weekend, but I haven't bothered with video since the original iMovie was a thing. Hmm...

@Grifflyer We sometimes fly in Oakwood or North Valley Park in Inver Grove Heights. Ping me if the weather is nice. I usually don't need a lot of peer pressure to go flying.