It surprises me how tense I can get watching these things trying to land when things are not going as planned. I think about the cost, and all the care and love and pride that must go into these things, and I just cringe when they come apart.

 

20 minutes ago, HiFlyer said:

 I think about the cost, and all the care and love and pride that must go into these things, and I just cringe when they come apart.

 

 

I had a Radian powered Glider, a wonderful aircraft which could be powered up to 500 ft AGL, then I could thermal it up to 2000 ft AGL by simply watching where the hawks over our park were thermaling.  However it developed a weird problem, the radio, which was a modern multi frequency radio, would get interference even though the mfr claimed they were interference proof.  I mounted a cheap video camera to my glider, was able to record two flights but on the third, the glider, upon reaching apogee, quit responding to radio input and crashed straight into the ground, destroying the nose and camera and it almost hit a car passing by.

I mournfully took the wreckage home and posted about it.  The glider mfr sent me a free replacement glider, bless their hearts, but I could not find a place to fly it far enough away from Luke AFB, which I feel was the reason my first glider crashed.  Even though we were out of their safety zone, they could still jam RC aircraft, since their F16's would sometimes overfly our community, even though they were not supposed to.

I used to fly kites in the same park I flew my park glider in (but with a 25knot landing speed, and no speed brakes, it took a soccer field's length to land it), and I had a kite with an eight foot wingspan I'd put a camera on and loft it to 1000 feet.  I still have pictures from my Kitecam, it was a Canon camera and the lens was just right for me to loop the safety strap around the face of the camera, tie it to my kite's keel, and send it aloft.

I was admired on the kite photography boards for using the camera that way.  I installed a hack to the camera's code which would allow it to snap a picture every few seconds at a pre programmed shutter speed and aperture, I found the hack online and installed it on the camera's SD card.  Because I had no way to remotely trigger the shutter, the camera just snapped pics until it ran out of memory, usually about the time I hauled the kite in anyway.  The kite had an incredibly strong pull--I used 250# test line on it and if it was too windy, it could life me off my feet, and that almost happened on a day when the winds were mild at ground level, but once it got to altitude it hit big time winds.

If I could get any RC aircraft right now, it would be a powered trike since I have flown trikes in real life, they are slow and safe.

 

Ouch!