What A Great Day For, Um, Flying!

I got an RC airplane for Christmas. As of 8 days ago, it had never been flown. I took it out of the box on Christmas morning to drool over and it hadn't been removed since. It's not that I haven't wanted to fly it, it's just difficult to find time to do so. "Even so," you say, "surely you have had a spare moment in the past 8 months to fly your airplane." I will admit that that is true. The problem during those moments was not my willingness or desire, but the weather. You see, by necessity, RC airplanes are very light, in order to get off the ground. This makes them very succeptible to wind. This means that any plans to fly my airplane must be accompanied by an "if the wind isn't too bad."

Last Saturday, I'd made tentative plans to fly my plane. I checked the wind in the afternoon and it was blowing a bit, but it didn't seem too bad. Then we drove to a park that had plenty of open space to fly my plane in. The problem with open spaces is that there is nothing to block the wind. It was blowing pretty steadily when we got there and would gust more and more frequently as time wore on. I should also explain that the plane needs to be assembled on site. put together, it is much too large to fit in my car.

After 20 minutes of chasing down screw baggies and wings being blown away, I was pretty sure that this wasn't what the manufacturers had in mind when they said "Fly your plane on a calm day." But I was at the park, my plane was put together, and dangit, I wanted to fly!

I put my plane on the park's road to use as a runway. I should have stopped when the plane kept being blown off course while trying to take off, but instead I picked it up to hand launch it. Being launched into a good breeze made it very easy to get up in the air. Having gusts come made the plane very difficult to control. At least I'd read the part of the manual that said to let off the throttle when landing to protect the propeller and motor in case of unintended contact with the ground. Because after a glorious 20 seconds of poorly controlled flight, my plane was not going the right way - where in this case, the 'right' way is anywhere but down. I wasn't trying to land, and I surely wasn't intending contact with the ground, but I let off the throttle in a hurry. It was an inauspicious beginning to my career as an rc pilot, and besides a slight crease to the tail fin, my plane came away suprisingly unscathed.

When the instructions say not to fly your plane in the wind, you should probably listen. Experience is supposedly the best teacher. Sometimes, though, experience is just a jerk.