TOPIC: Yak 23 & Jet Spifire

Roj Reese was at Buckminster yesterday. Roj reports:
"It was as warm but blustery, with not too many free fighters but met up with Brian Lever. Sadly no rocketeers but moi.....
I had no success to speak of with my sport models but when the condition calmed I ventured a flight with the Yak 23 [mk 1]. Using a VMC L-2 it climed vertically and looped in large repeat circles travelling down wind at a rate of knots. The motor run was constant and the flightspeed was fast. The model ended up about 700 metres down wind and found a tree on the boundary . I found model, less left wing .



It is repairable, and Brian, who witnessed this impressive flight remarked how wonderful and exciting a flight it was. Looking over the model post-flight, I noticed the thrust tab was missing, which probably resulted in the looping".

I take this as a success - we've all had far less succesful and indeed disastrous maiden flights!
The thrust tab might of course have come off in the impact with the tree, but its absence points to the importance of preflight checks.
As to the looping .... this can also be cured by trimming in a little left or right rudder or aileron to (hopefully) get a climbing turn. The fact the loops were dead straight shows how accurately Roj had built his model and trimmed it for the de rigeur 'dead straight glide from a hand launch'.

I hope Roj is encouraged by this first powered flight and I look forward to seeing how his mk 2 (which is a bit larger and therefore likely to be less fiesty) behaves. But we will pick a calm day for its first flight and try out some less powerful motors first.

Onward and upwards!

Sad to see the tree damage but brilliant nevertheless, congratulations, the model looks great too.