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Tuesday 24 September 2013

Welsh Open 2013 F3F

Well this years Welsh Open was a bit of a disappointment with only three rounds flown on the first day in very light winds and then no more flying for the other two days. What can you say, after the fantastic BMFA Nationals a few months ago in Wales I guess it was too much to expect another fantastic competition but that's F3F for you, oh well, roll on the Northern Winter League....


Welsh Open 2013 from Tom Foreman on Vimeo.

Saturday 14 September 2013

Xenon Re-maiden

Managed to grab a few hours up Parlick today to re-maiden the Xenon after I had a Hyperion aileron servo fail on me a couple of months ago. Had decided to replace both aileron servo's with trusty Futaba 3150's so had  quite a bit of work to do to remove the old servo's and then fit the new ones, but its done now.




A good North Westerly 15mph wind put me on my favourite North West bowl, I put 1200g of ballast in her and chucked her off, immediately she started going down and she needed a fair amount of up elevator trim to get her flying level, a few clicks of right aileron trim got her flying true. I then started to EM her but she was struggling to pull the left hand turn, I had to be very gentle with the elevator after the turn is initiated with the rudder. She kept dropping out of the sky instead of pinging out of the turn. At first I thought it was me, as cross tails are a little different to vee tails, you have to bank them over with the rudder first then pull hard around the turn with the elevator (a bit like DSing). But it soon became apparent I had over ballasted her, so a quick landing and I dropped her to 600g, put things right, and she was soon pinging out of the turns and ripping up the sky in convincing manner.

After I got bored of EM practise I checked out whether the new Futaba 3150 servo's were any different from the Hyperion DS095 they had replaced by doing some reversal turns, but they seemed just the same. Roll rate is a bit slower than the Cyril or the Stinger and she doesn't grip in the turns as well either so you can't bang her round that quick, a grippy model she isn't. Still the cross tail means she is more stable and tracks really well, I managed to do some very nice reversal turns parallel to the slope much tidier than when I was at the Scottish Nationals with the Stinger a few weeks ago.

Anyway with the skies starting to get crowded with paragliders and full size gliders I called it a day and packed up to get home and back to the build table. At the moment I am in the middle of fixing my Cyril from a big crash earlier in the year and I also smashed the Stinger up in Scotland. However a big shout goes out to Vaclav at VV models who has managed to make me a new pair of tails and wing joiner in record time, fantastic service! So with a bit of luck I'll have the Stinger back together in time for the Welsh Open next weekend, oh well, better get back to the build table and do some more fixing!