I stood on the west ridge of big L today, Alpina balanced in one hand, tx in the other.
I’d set out a plan of action for myself.
Provided the model was stable and controllable I’ll just float her around the skies for ten minutes, keeping her in low rate, and get the ‘feel’ of this plane. Then bring her in for a gentle landing. That was my plan.
What do that say about, 'Best made plans?'
It took about three minutes before the desire to try a loop became overwhelming.!
Up to a good height, steep dive, gently back on the stick and hold it there. The wings flexed somewhat coming out of the loop but all was well. She exited the loop with quite a bit of speed so I thought of repeating that manoeuvre and adding a roll after the loop.
This experiment didn’t work quite so well. The loop was fine but the roll rate was very slow. In fact she didn’t complete the roll before I cancelled it after only 90 degrees, because she rolled so slowly.
I thought to myself, “This can’t be right. The Alpina is supposed to be an aerobatic model.” (I switched over to high rate control.)
I let the plane cruise around the sky a little while longer before switching in the aileron / flap mix and took her up high again. Didn’t bother with a loop this time, just put her into a dive, levelled out and pushed the stick hard over.
I was rewarded with the sight of a graceful 360 degree roll, and she still maintained a fair bit of speed having only lost a couple of meters of height.
I could feel a smile creeping across my face as I knew I’d now combine the two manoeuvres.
Up, up she went. I put her into a dive, then changed my mind. Instead of a loop first, I levelled her off. Rolled her 180 degrees. Pulled back on the stick. Completed one & half loops. Levelled off at the bottom of the half loop. Pushed the stick hard over, and heard a voice shout “Yes”. I turned and looked behind myself, saw nobody was there, and concluded it must have been me that had shouted.
And so to the landing;
My first attempt was a complete cock-up. Far too high on the approach and far too fast. Out into the lift she went to go round for another try. Round she came again onto her final approach, much lower this time but still quite fast. I put in some crow, and she ballooned upwards. I pushed forward on the stick and increased the crow. She slowed up surprisingly quickly, but just kept gaining height. Out and round she went again.
“Okay, this is it,” I said to myself, “third time lucky.”
I brought her in low, started applying crow braking, compensated for ballooning with forward pressure, suddenly she dropped out of the air, (my bowels became very loose.) I reduced the crow, maintained a little forward pressure and prayed she wouldn’t hit the deck. She didn’t, and once again she flew out into the lift.
By this time my lips had gone dry and I noticed a very unsavoury aroma, which I put down to the numerous sheep shits that were laying around the landing area. Although I could be wrong about that.
I thought to myself, “I’ve got to get this girl on the ground. May be I’m trying too hard, perhaps I should give up on landing and just fly her around for a bit, and then try later………….No, you’re procrastinating Keith,…land her now!”
This is what happened.
The turn onto the final approach was a very low, the wing tip nearly clipped the ground.
I levelled her off and applied the crow too soon. Plane lost a lot of speed and would not have made it to the landing area. I eased off the crow. As the plane got closer to the landing area I re-applied crow, pushed forward on stick, put in a little aileron to keep wings level & rudder to keep her facing the wind,….and she sat down on top of the heather. Perfect!
I enjoyed myself on Mt Lienster today, I learnt a lot, and that’s what I like.
Keith
