GREYEAGLE
Key Veteran
Location: Sioux City IA
My Posts This: Topic Forum | Easy to fly but difficult to fly well !My sail plane days taught me more about flying models than any SIM ever could. Period ! Many say I have uncanny skills for saving dead sticked aircraft or ones that have a fault in mid air. My last was when a little 3-D bird with two piece wings had the rear locating pin on one wing exit out thru the fuse and into the other wing. Essentially I had one wing only, as the other pivoted around the wing rod Dangest craziest landing I ever made but it was through my sailplanes skill's. Airfoil's, balance, speed management, inertia and mass , wet or dirty, it teaches it all to you
Everyone one thinks flying sailplanes is easy, but few have spent the day aloft on a single launch, or thermal ed back up and out from 20 feet.
I had the darnest time learning to read lift even though I had a very great mentor. But once you accidentally stumble into your first hatsucker you will be hooked for life.  It's like practicing witchcraft. My mentor was just plain scary good at it !!! Even with a plywood bird we called the ball bat.
I've thermaled out in rain storms, had to hold very - very long extended vertical dives all crowed out and dirty in wall clouds - just hoping to get back - and even had my Aquila Grande kidnapped by a Bald Eagle.  Best is when I once hand launched my #2 B.O. T just messing around and hooked up some ground lift and went out on it .
Like to try the discus launch micro stuff but wonder If I'd get dizzy and fall down at the moment of launch. It's a blast seeing guy's thermal out from hand launches.
Real fun is sitting in a lawn chair, in a pickup doing 70MPH on gravel - during a cross country and having your Sagitta 900 leave you standing still as go'e up and out carrying 3Lbs of lead. Think I left a dent in the roof pounding : " Faster - Faster - Faster " 
Oylimpic 99 ? Wow !'- that deserves a few baby wipes to clean up and a good rubbing with some fresh wool - and a few sweet whispers.
Nothing funner that showing up among the carbon wet birds with a old 2M Drifter and listen to them snicker and laugh at your $16.00 sailplane. Then to go home - snikering and laughing all the way - with all the goodies .
greyeagle |
I need to break out mine and get soaring, possibly this weekend
