Ben's Blog

Come fly the friendly skies

We took the plane out today, despite the 20 degree weather. The first flight was in pretty high wind and ended badly – I had to replace the propeller and spinner. On the last flight, we discovered that the plane will actually take off from the ground, and does not have to be thrown – probably due to the wheel I added to the back of the plane.

Anyway, the last flight went pretty well until I got a little too close to the trees. A 1000 x 1000 foot field isn’t all that big when you’re going 30 miles an hour! If you like, you can watch the video, or download it and watch it later.

As you’ll hear in the video, the engine noise made Mechel upset. He also cried when the plane crashed. Its OK Mechel!

I realized I was in trouble when I saw the left wing go behind a tree branch (below). I tightened up the turn, but I was too far into the trees and hit another tree 25 frames (0.8 seconds) later.

Living up to it’s name, the DuraPlane survived the 40 foot fall unscathed.

Mechel helped me clean up the plane and posed with me for a victory shot:

I’m looking forward to next Sunday!