Here’s a clip of me chasing Jeff’s Super Cub with my Tiger Moth.
Tag Archives: supercub
A Guy Named Jake and His Plane
I was at the park flying a few weeks ago when a novice pilot named Jake came and asked for some advice for his first flight. Oh boy. 🙂
Lazy SuperCub Flight At The Park
SuperCub – Super Busted
This past Friday evening I took my wife to the park to show her how my cub looks to fly at night. There was a pretty stiff breeze, but not anything worse than what I’ve flown in before, so we went out into the field and I took off. I did a few low passes, eliciting several Ohhhhhs and Ahhhhhs from my wife, then I took it to the far side of the field and turned it back towards us. The wind was stiff enough that it appeared to just hover there over the edge of the field, maybe 50′ off the ground. Then, suddenly, it nosed over and went into a perfectly vertical dive straight down, ignoring all my control inputs on my transmitter.
A cub makes a pretty sickening crunch when it augers in. 🙁
I don’t have a definitive answer about what caused the crash, and likely never will. All the control linkages survived the crash and still work just fine, and the radio transmitter has good batteries in it, and the receiver and other electronics on the plane still work fine. At this point all I can think of is radio interference – which occasionally happens for a second or 2, but not for long enough to bring a plane down like this.
Here are some pictures of the carnage:
Saturday night I spent a few hours deciding if it would fly again. Turns out, with enough epoxy it looks like it will:
Fly An R/C Plane At Night? Am I Crazy?
Anyone who has ever tried to fly a remote controlled plane will tell you that it is tricky. They can be squirrely in the air, drastically affected by the lightest of breezes, it’s very easy to get the controls all mixed up, and you will crash – a lot.
I’ve been flying for about a year now, and my Super Cub is still alive. I’ve flown it in all sorts of weather conditions: on perfectly calm days, in the rain, in the snow, in winds in excess of 30 mph (almost lost it that day), in the bitter cold, in the heat of summer. However, I’ve always flown during daylight.
Today, I flew at night.
I attached 4 of these to the underside of my wings, pointing at the fuselage:
Here’s a little video I did of how my maiden night flight turned out:
And here’s a link to more details on the lights and a video of the plane flying at night as seen from the ground:
http://www.kimballlarsen.com/2010/02/14/how-to-replace-batteries-on-keychain-led-flashlights/
Historically Important Date
Today is a very important day.
On this day in:
1809: Naturalist Charles Darwin was born in Shrewsbury, England.
1809: Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States, was born in present-day Larue County, Ky.
1915: The cornerstone for the Lincoln Memorial was laid in Washington, D.C.
1977: I was born.
2000: Charles M. Schulz, creator of the “Peanuts” comic strip, died at age 77.
2006: A record 26.9 inches of snow fell in New York’s Central Park.
2009: I received my very own HobbyZone Super Cub!
I’ve read all kinds of great things about this plane, and I think I’ve watched just about every youtube video of people flying this model. Given my apparent lack of skill as a pilot this far, I’m pretty excited about the prospect of getting it in the air to see if it really lives up to the claims about how easy it is to fly.
I spent some time this evening putting it all together, charging up the batteries, and trimming the control surfaces. It’s ready to fly – if only the sun were up. 😉
Stay tuned – I’ll try to get a video made of my maiden flight!