Depth Perception

Flight Date: 19Feb2009

Conditions
Equipment: (Super Cub- Stock Plane and Electronics)
WX: ~8mph, Temp ~19F
Ground Conditions: 1inch light snow
Field: (#2 Baseball Field)

Flight Summary
I decided to try a different field today. This 2^nd field is primarily a baseball field and is probably around 600X600 feet. On one side it is lined with trees which makes a nice buffer between the “flying field” and the nearby homes. Oddly enough I had the whole field to myself this evening around 5:15 as the sun began to dip behind the horizon casting a yellow glow on the field that was just recently dusted with snow.

The pictures above illustrates one unfortunate incident that occurred during the first of 2 flights. At 9minutes, 12 seconds into the flight SC landed in a tree at about 25 feet. Now a slight digression....

For those of you SIM users I am guessing you may occasionally find yourself colliding with the trees in the background only to say to yourself “how fake, I was nowhere near those trees”. Well, oddly enough, the first thought that crossed my mind was, “I was nowhere near those trees”. While in the sim the plane breaks into pieces in real life the plane just lands in the trees as if to say: “I am ready for the next flight if you can get me down”

This is when you also begin thinking to yourself “what if that had been a nice balsa kit that I had spent the last 6 months building and equipping with the latest and greatest electronics instead of a relatively inexpensive piece of foam and plastic from China.

After surveying the situation, I thought I had 3 options. 1.) Go buy another SuperCub, 2.) Check back every 1-2 hours to see if the wind picked up enough to blow the SC down. 3.) Go back to my garage and load up the car with my trusty plastic conduit and see if I could get lucky.

Well, as much as I wanted to go with option 1, I new I had to return to get a picture for the blog. So, I loaded up the car with 3, 8 feet sections and a few shorter pieces of plastic conduit and a roll of electrical tape.

To make a long story short, after a lot of heaving and struggling I finally managed to dislodge SC from her perch. The result was bent landing gear and a few more chips on the wing edges. No big deal....

I was cold, It was almost dark and I was not happy, what better conditions for flight number 2!

I went ahead and conducted some repeated take off and landings. All told I completed about 12 new landings and at least half where great. The others where fine but resulted in minor undesirable qualities like a gentle nose or wing tip.

Things I learned from these flights
Depth perception can be and issue with trees
For field flying choosing your flying position can help avoid a depth perception issue- e.g. stand between your flying area and the objects of concern and don't allow the plane to pass
My 10 dollar leather lined work gloves are warmer than my 40 REI gloves
Wielding 25 feet of plastic conduit in 20 degree weather isn't an attractive aspect of RC flight

Damage

None

Stats

Cumulative Flights: 14

Cumulative Hrs: 2.7

Successful Landings: 22

$ to date: $195.5