My usual spot I go out to is the Bedwell Bayfront Park in Menlo Park off the 84 E heading to the Dumbarton Bridge. It is a nice open field where people go to fly their planes.
During the Martin Luther King weekend, I went out Sunday morning with my dad to fly the planes. Unfortunately, the Hobby Zone Champ was missing a horn that helps to control the elevator. My dad crashed it a few times, but started to get the hang of it and landing it. I was flying my FMS Fox Glider 800mm plane and having a blast doing turns and loops. I went through all 5 of my batteries which seem to last about a good 8 minutes at full throttle.
In the afternoon, the wind was a little breezy, but not too bad. We met up with Ricky W., who has flown planes before (and real ones too). He got a chance to fly the Champ and my Fox Glider. Because the Fox Glider is faster, Ricky liked it more. Meanwhile, Matthew was able to fly the Champ pretty well after I got a chance to fix the horn. While we were at HobbyTown in Sunnyvale buying the new tail for the Champ, he was on the flight simulator and we doing quite well, therefore he was able to fly the Champ fairly well. Unfortunately toward the end of Matthew’s flight, he landed a bit hard while turning, and the main wing was sliced off. I fixed it with crazy glue, 3 toothpicks, and some packaging tape.
The Fox Glider didn’t survive as well. The fuselage is cracked and the tail half behind the main wing is ready to tear off. The front cockpit area is all distorted. I had to use some Gorilla glue and some packaging tape to get it back to working order. It took a bit of time, but managed to get it in decent shape again. I took Ricky’s advice and instead of putting the battery all the way in the back, I put it more forward to maybe balance the plane better. Doing this got me thinking that maybe I can get a bigger capacity battery, like an 800mah, to get longer light times. We’ll see.
Because Ricky and Matthew were flying the Champ, I got a chance to shoot some in flight photos. I used my D800 (slow fps) and my 70-200mm f/4 VR III lens at 200mm and f/4. ISO was at 400 to keep the shutter up. The focusing was on continuous spot focus and I had to track/pan with the plane as it flew by. I am hoping to get pictures of the Fox Glider in action, but someone has to confidently fly it.
Enjoy the slideshow!
Leave a Reply