Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

"Good"

Today was Flying Field Maintenance Day. Don, Corsair Don, Harvey, Ralph, Ron, Larry, Al, Scott and I showed up. Don cut the field with his bagger mower. I brought my fertilizer spreader. Larry and I flagged the field and Don pulled the spreader around with his mower.

Things went pretty smooth and everybody pitched in. When the work was finished Don spent some time with each of us. For some it was flying on the buddy box. For me it was trimming out my Anaconda camera plane.

I bought the Anaconda from my friend Dustin after he crashed it. After ordering the repair parts he offered to sell it to me and I took him up on the offer. Several weeks ago I resolved not to take a model airplane to the flying field that I had not checked out in my yard. After checking out the Anaconda and making sure everything worked I loaded it into the van and took it out to the field. Don said he would "Maiden" it and set the trims. After the work was finished I took it out of the van and put it on the flight table. Would you believe that there was more damage from Dustin's crash than I realized. The screws that hold the booms on had stripped and would no longer hold tightly to the carbon fiber rods. SHUCKS! Rather than risk the booms separating in flight I decided to glue them permanently together. This meant that once glued there was no taking them apart. So after the glue set I hooked all the wires up and tested the control surfaces with my radio transmitter. Would you believe that one of the control surface wires had a break somewhere inside the boom. Not only did the errant wire no longer work but it was now inaccessible. SHUCKS! So I had to connect a jumper wire to the servo connection and lead the wire outside the boom and then back down into the fuselage. Instead of the wire being neatly hidden it was now taped to the outside of the aircraft. Cute huh? While that solved the problem it looks like crap and I will have to do something about it tomorrow.

Despite the unsightly appearance everything now worked and the Maiden flight of the Anaconda was rather uneventful. I had heard that the Anaconda was not a great flyer, but there was no flight evidence that the model was any different from any other radio aircraft that shows up at our flying field. While things didn't go as smoothly as I hoped, the airplane flew well enough and didn't crash.

I sent Dustin a text message and he responded... "Good" (A man of few words that Dustin.) I'll let my notification sink in and next week get him to help me install the First Person View (FPV) electronics.