How
to really really enjoy your lunch break…..
1)
Skip
lunch and go fly a DLG.
2)
Get
caught under a couple of massive ground hoovering clouds
3)
Fly
for 41 Minutes 31 seconds
4)
Sneak
back to work with a big grin, feeling good
5)
Get
home in the evening and download the Lolo trace so that you relive the flight.
Gory
Details:
The
Model…
A Highlight
DLG (About 11 Oz after recent repairs).
Schulze 835
Rx with Glitch Counter (first time I got the light on Solid = >128 Glitches :-( )
Battery 700mAh
NimH (good for a couple of hours in my tests)
Servo's all
Graupner C1081's
Lolo set to
2 second sample rate (Tip here is to not get round to fitting a ballast system,
this leaves a nice space under the wing for the Lolo :-) )
The
Venue…
A Large
sports field near Brockham with plenty of rugby posts to dodge.
(For any
locals it is an NT field and whilst Box Hill is a large slope a few hundred
yards away the wind was along and from the hill.)
The Day
and weather…
Tuesday
August 19th 2003, warm glorious sunshine and about 3/8ths cloud
building as I arrived. The wind was Light and variable on arrival. This
transformed into 7/8ths cloud, cold and a stiff breeze by the end of the
flight.
LoLo
Trace
Blow by
blow of the flight...
I caught
the weather about perfect as you can see from the trace. Once I got high I
stayed high for most of the flight. Some of which was spent flat on my back
watching this spec above my head. I thought it was getting a tad small on a few
occasions and the trace shows a high point of 495.5m so I conclude that
visibility was very very good.
I did a
number of launches before I got away. The air was bouncy and promised a lot,
but it seemed hard to find a thermal. The flight was basically a scratch around
"fly out of the lift" sort of start followed by finding a patch so
big even I could not miss it. Then I went as high as I dared and tried to stay
under my first cloud. The wind during this phase went through 180 degrees and
back again as the thermal I was in got closer and went by. Its
a weird feeling to be flying downwind of youself whilst turning all the way
round. The tactic of staying with the cloud worked well for 15 of so minutes
then I decided to hop the gap to the next cloud which was bigger and darker.
This proved to be the right decision as I soon flew into big lift.
I
experimented with ways of keeping it in sight under both clouds (a nice problem
to have, but I did scare myself a couple of times and certainly dare not look
away when it was really high for fear of not being able to re-aquire it) and
decided that the old sticks in the corner fast spiral dive worked best.
Inverted was good but hard to judge speed at height and so I felt safer with
the spin/spiral approach as the model seemed to reach a highish velocity quickly
but then stayed at that speed. Some of the steep downs on the trace must be
these manoeuvres.
The weather
eventually decided enough was enough and the clouds grew to block the sun
locally. Thus, as I left this cloud, I pushed forward into general sink. I
could find no more large thermal activity (Just as well as my Lunch hour was
already quite extended :-)
). A small bump low down raised my hopes but it was going downwind too
fast to guarantee getting back to the field so I chickened out of that one and
landed soon after.
It's
amazing how much fun you can have with a DLG. No long set up of launching
equipment or model, just attach the wing (I have a small car, others can keep
it in one piece and so avoid even this step) and fly. And it certainly improves
you reading of the air and general thermalling skills.
Give it a
try some time, you will like it :-)
Martin
Godden
BARCS 162.