Cumberland and Warrenton

The weekend looked like it was going to be good for flying. Saturday forcast in Cumberland was for nice weather and winds that looked like they would be good for the slope. So I packed up the Cyril and Fosa as well as the Salto, Foka, and Pilatus and headed off to Cumberland. The weekend matched up with the Cumberland Spring soar for fun and the launch event for rcaerotowing.com.

The weather was sunny when I made it to the field Saturday. Everyone said that Friday was the really good slope day where you could fly anything. The first thing I put together was the Salto. I just got my DSMX update installed on my JR 12X and put a new AR9310 receiver in the Salto. So now I have flown DSMX.... The slope lift is not that strong but there is a bit of thermal lift. So it's great conditions for a big scale ship. My 1:2.9 Foka 4 is even more fun with lift and has much better aerobatic and inverted performance than the Salto. The next launch is on the Foka. That launch had a little excitement. After waiting a minute until some cold sinky air passed, the tow started. Then things stop climbing and Jim said I have a problem so we both dumped the towline. Fortunately I have a sailplane. Jim made it back to the field but wasn't in a good position so had a rough landing trying to avoid flying down the hill where he wouldn't be able to see the model any more. There was enough lift for me to take the Foka up and put in a bit more flying. The wind looked like it shifted a little more west so I put up the Fosa off a bungee. But things weren't that good so it was mostly just flying with low energy. But I could see the mixes needed more work. A little more aileron to rudder mix was needed. After flying it was off to the rcaerotowing.com launch event in the evening.

Sunday looked like sunny with light winds maybe a little east. So no slope lift but fine for aerotowing. Josh, Neil, Reto were planning on a F3j practice in Warrenton. So I headed there in the morning to do some TD practice and setup on the Fosa and Cyril. It was light, variable winds. So I did get a chance to dial in the TD presets as well as tune the rudder mixes. I also had lots of chances to practice downwind launches. So some good progress on model setup. Monday morning there was more of the white stuff on the ground in NJ. Where is spring?