Glauco Lago: Was able to get a special permit with the wife for some Sunday morning flying so loaded the car Saturday night, was up by 6:30 on Sunday and made to the sod farm at 7:30.

The idea was to practice F3B so another 45 minutes to set up both winches and by 8:15 had the first launch. Actually the first plane to launch was the Aspire since I wanted to test the fuse repair and nothing better than a B winch since it can rip any moldie wing. I went easy on the launch but that darn one way brake keeps adding tension even if you are off pedal so I got a very nice snap and zoom without anything falling apart. Not much lift so just cruised back.

Time for the always scary Tool. Not much wind so to warm up decided to launch without ballast and have a thermal duration flight. Then none else than Chris and wife showed up at the field, just passing by on their way to Columbia. Chris wanted to see a speed run so I loaded the Tool with full ballast, all up weight was about 120 oz and let him throw which scared him a bit but all went fine.

Launch wasn’t too good and the simulated run was slow so went for another try, this one was a little faster. After about 5 minutes they left unimpressed with the “speed” and I went back to the original program, removed most of the ballast to launch the plane myself. Usually on B you refer to ballast as a percent of total weight your plane can carry so 100% would be full ballast.

Due to the small V tail, the Tool needs a good throw to get it flying and after I broke one on launch I’m always scared. So for the distance runs I started with 40% ballast without too much trouble throwing it, then settled to 60%. Mike Lachowski passed me some tips saying I should try to find lift before getting in the course, easily done considering you are flying a 100 oz, 118” WS unstable V tail plane, nope, not easy but fun trying.

Thought the roll was a bit slow on distance so added some aileron throw and for fun some more elevator throw. Wow, really glad to have tested this configuration right after launch, while the aileron was fine, the added elevator caused the nastiest stall and spin I have ever seen. It seemed the plane took forever to recover.

At this point the wind had picked up a bit so went for 80% ballast just to see if I could launch. All went fine and after a couple more speed runs decided to quit wasting my luck. By 11:30 all was packed and I headed back home.

Glauco

The Tool looks nice and straight coming out of the hand, but boy did it do a nasty snap to the right heading out horizontal to the ground.  Glauco calmly steered it back upright.  All that practice seems to be paying off.