I had a few spare moments today, so I went out and flew my newly
finished scratchbuilt RCM Basic Trainer, which is a .25 powered high
winger with Clark-Y type airfoil. I set it up with lots of throw on the
ailerons and elevator. It's a really great airplane, but the place I
was flying made me nervous. I live in a rural area a few miles outside
Springfield Missouri, which is good, but the fields around here are
really rough and/or covered with tall grass, which is bad. I've had my
eye on a new commercial real estate development of about 60 acres or so.
It has streets and lamp posts but no buildings yet, and it's totally
deserted after 3 pm and all day on weekends, and there are no neighbors.
(Go ahead and tell me I should join an AMA club and not fly at
unfinished subdivisions. I'm listening.)
The plane trimmed and flew great. It's a really nifty little plane that
kind of reminds me of Fred Reese's Simple Citabria. Landing was a bit
of a challenge. Those streets are very narrow, with killer curbs. The
lamp posts don't look bad, until you have a plane in the air. Then they
suddenly turn very menacing. I managed to get the plane down without
incident by ungracefully plopping it from about a foot up. At least I
didn't hit anything. I had forgotten how much I don't like flying in
unfinished subdivisions....
The best part of the outing was when I went down to the big drainage
pond. I always thought it looked promising from the car, but that's
about as far as it went. Well, I walked down to the water's edge this
time, and it's perfect. The surrounding land is about 8 feet above the
water level, with about 20 feet or so of bank all around. The pond
itself is several hundred feet long and a couple hundred wide. There
are no trees or any other obstructions anywhere near it, and the low
elevation of the pond makes for gentle wind conditions on the water
surface.
Of course I came home and immediately dug out my balsa float plans. If
I get some time to build them I should be able to try it out within a
couple of weeks. I've done a little bit of float flying in the past,
and it was a ton of fun. I always wanted to do more, but it's just so
hard to find an accessible pond in Missouri that doesn't have trees
around it. We're planning to move again in a few months, so I need to
take this op****tunity while I have it.
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