May 9, 2013
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Thursday 9th may 2013
Thursday Afternoon: Warm with high cloud, 25C and breezy. It has been breezy for the last few days, but there have been a couple of times when the wind dropped and I could fly. This week has been warm, but last week was cold and windy.
After it’s crash, the motor in the Skylark has been sounding a bit rough, the prop driver was slightly bent although the prop was running true and it was still able to fly. I ordered a replacement prop driver with a spinner with the intention of adding a small amount of weight to the nose as I thought the model was slightly tail heavy.
The new prop driver/spinner sits a little further forward too as well as looking really good, but the difference it has made to the model is incredible! The motor is running silently again, just the faint wurr of the prop, but the main difference was the weight shift. The model is designed to balance on the main spar, which it nearly was as it was sitting level, but the ideal is for it to sit slightly nose down. The spinner weighs about an ounce (25g) and this has moved the c of g forward ever so slightly with astonishing results.
Before I always felt the model had a tendency to want to drop a wing, although it never did, it also needed a little down trim to fly level, but now it simply will not stall, it just wallows and only climbs genlty under power. This has made the landing approaches feel much more controllable and safer.
I had waited a couple of days for a calm spot and it was warm, calm and cloudy yesterday morning, perfect. I had to hand launch as the grass was too long to take off and immeadiatly noticed the difference as the model climbed gently away. I mowed the runways again in the afternoon, it is growing so fast at the moment.
Last night the air became calm again and it was still very warm at 25C which made it thick and buoyant and I enjoyed flying three of the models including Skylark.
