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August 2003

August 1st

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ouch! Wingo had a bad crash (Pictures )

had a bad crash this morning - countless hours worth of fixing...

luckily it was just the Aiptek on board, impact after 104s - and again I did not manage to get the video out of the camera

tail rod bent and broken - maybe I'll replace it with carbon fibre alltogether fuselage cracked quite a bit more - I will use glass fibre to glue pieces together - the styro is still needed to soften impacts

godfrey: wind or other caused crash?

I dont know - I noticed one prop was broken, but not sure if it was the impact or if it decomposed during the flight.

Suddenly it went into a steep dive and I was not able to do anything - it was flying fine (excellent!) in the first flight with the lame 6cells, the second flight with 7 cells was meant to produce a video with the Aiptek...

Next time I will do a stress test at home first... after the wing is fixed that is - just minor damage on the wing which was still firmly attached on the ground - and the aluminium rod bent right under the wing attachment maybe the tail broke during flight - it might have shifted, as the epoxy was not as plentyful like I thought between the glass fibre and the rod

August 4th

After lots of fixing and changes the Porter was back in the air last night and this morning.

quite hard to control, I had to correct a lot up and to the left - more than I could fix with pitch. At 1min 30s I loose the controls, and the plane goes in a steep decline - zero throttle, plane catches up

a lot of shaking at low speeds

buzzing all over my head - I did not want to go too high because there was traffic on the nearby airport

speed diving, near misses

August 6th

it is 6.15am - waiting for the nikon battery to get loaded. Weather conditions look fine. I will go to the Birrfeld airfield again just to make sure one more time everything is fine before I fly again over houses and roads with traffic.

video clip 1 (6.8MB 320x240 10fps 3+min)

  • nice and steady climb flying away straight from me for 1min 15s, then sudden descent to the right - did the camera shift?
  • regaining controls 1:30 - 2:00 - I can hold the plane ok, but it requires a lot of rudder to go straight
  • looking for a nice way to land 2:00 - 3:19

Pictures taken with the Nikon Coolpix 880 after this not very encouraging flight above.

on the Nikon I also had a partial loss of control when the plane was at quite some distance - regained controls quickly.

I should have taken more pictures

On landing I had a stall about 1m above ground, and then the plane dropped. The Nikon cam case disconnected from the plane nicely as planned, even the servo plus disconnected from the receiver -> no damage to anything

video clip 2 (7.7MB 320x240 10fps 3+min)

this one looks a bit as if I should have cleaned the lense before taking off. The first 2 mins are rather shaky, but then I got a good speed and still air for big circles at low hight

I received the Kodak mc3 and a 256MB CF card when I came back, eager to try that now...

August 8th

First I broke the tail at about 20mins pas six am - enough time to fix it and go fly again.

video clip 1 (13.6MB 320x240 20fps 6min 50sec) the whole story of this morning

video clip 2 (12MB 320x240 20fps 5min 50sec) best flight video

August 9th

practising with the Kodak mc3 I made a capital mistake - flew into the sun and when I figured where the plane was, it was heading straigt down...

Pictures

I took a panoramic view before taking off

and another one after crashing (to test the camera - working fine...)

August 12th

just a short flight this morning - after taking off fine, the plane went in a uncontrollable dive (dont know why) and crashed again...

looks like it is time for me to redesign the whole stuff...

before I dump it in the trash bin....

thoughts I had on the way back (car drive video clip low bandwidth)

August 15th

I guess this porter came to an end. My test fuselage did not make it for long, but it looked very practical before it broke :-)

Pictures

August 27th

Having done my paperwork, I went for a flight with the Multiplex TwinStar I bought on Ebay and fixed recently.

As the old Wingo Porter is dumped (and the new one is still in the box) I thought I give the TwinStar a try.

I was not very successfull - had about 5mins of flight, but that was enough to realize that this plane will not help much in carrying a camera...

Pictures