2015 FSS Wrap-up

2015 was my first year doing soaring events. I really enjoyed flying with the Florida Soaring Society! Now that 2015 has come and gone I thought I would post a quick 2015 FSS wrap-up. 2015 FSS Wrap-up In 2015 I participated in four Florida Soaring Society contests. Each contest consisted of two events held on a Saturday and Sunday. I actually completed seven total events. On the eighth event I lost my Gracia Maxi and didn’t finish. Basically, I really enjoyed 7 days of competitive soaring with a great group of people and had one stinker of day. For the … Continue reading

HobbyKing NTM Prop Drive

For my Sbach 342 I decided to use a NTM Prop Drive 50-60 series motor. The NTM Prop Drive motors from HobbyKing tend to be pretty good motors. HobbyKing doesn’t tend to market them as their top end motor so when compare it to their “nice” motors it’s a good deal. When compared to even nicer motors like Scorpions or Hackers it’s a steal! The NTM Prop Drive 50-60 360kv motor can swing a pretty big prop. According to HobbyKing’s numbers a 17×8 prop will pull 1900 watts. A 17×10 will pull over 2100 watts, 86 amps. This seemed pretty impressive. … Continue reading

Update on FAA’s 400ft Guideline

This is an update to my last post about the FAA’s 400ft guideline. Ever since the proposed registration was announced RCGroups’ Sailplane Talk forum had a discussion on the 400ft rule. I was catching up on some of the discussion there when I saw a post that mentioned that the AMA met with the FAA over some of the major concerns that members had with the wording placed on their site and in the safety material that was being used. A link to an article titled FAA Advocacy Meeting January 15 and 16 was in the post. Several important things were mentioned regarding … Continue reading

FAA’s Ridiculous Drone Registration

Recently, the FAA has mandated the registration of all sUAS which are greater than 250 grams. This was done because of the reckless use of “drones” or multi-rotors by people in highly populated areas and near airports. According to the Special Rule for Model Aircraft, HR 658, a community based organization, or CBO, can oversee model aircraft so long as the aircraft operate within the guidelines of the rules outlined. A gross simplification of this means that in the special rule a set of guidelines were prescribed and a CBO would make sure that its members followed those rules. The Aeronautical Model Association, or … Continue reading

Gracia Maxi Obituary, Xplorers Are Expensive!

The Xplorer Mark III by Nan Models is the pinnacle of thermal duration gliders. It’s light, weighing only 1700g for the 4 meter version. The Xplorer line has a number of championships and wins to its name. I consider it the defacto standard for F3J gliders. Here’s a picture from the last Florida Soaring Society event in 2015 in which I participated: Of the eleven people which participated, eight of them flew some version of the Xplorer. This glider is so popular that I often ask other RC pilots who are not flying it why they chose something different. The reason … Continue reading

System-less Root on Nexus 6 – Marshmallow 6.0.1

Quick notice. I’m not taking any responsibility if you break your phone attempting this system-less root method (or any other thing I may mention). These steps work for me and have worked for many others. Double check what you type into the console. I suggest you read through these instructions once or twice before attempting them on your Nexus. This is going to be a quick guide to get to a system-less root on a Nexus 6 on Marshmallow 6.0.1 (build MMB29S). I’m writing this up here because I have a buddy that wants to get rooted now that he’s … Continue reading

Sbach 342 Completed

The blog has been quiet for a while. Too quiet! Work has been a mess. I also attended a bunch of soaring events over the latter part of the year. I even spent a couple of weeks in South Africa! Anyhow, Christmas came up fast and I got to take a couple of weeks off. During my time off I was able to put in a couple days to get the Sbach completed! Where I last left off in the previous build update I was with working on the emmpenage. In that post I showed the elevator setup. Unfortunately I forgot … Continue reading

Flying Gators RC Club – FlyingGatorsRC.com

Announcing the opening of the new website for the Flying Gators RC Club: FlyingGatorsRC.com! I am a member of the Flying Gators Model Airplane Club in Gainesville, FL. During the last year our website went down due to a member passing away. I wasn’t able to get the domain name or hosting access to salvage the site. Instead I took the knowledge I gained from running this site and built up a WordPress site using GoDaddy’s WordPress hosting services. Was a bit easier than setting up this site by hand! Anyhow, if you’re in the Gainesville, FL area and fly RC … Continue reading

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Sbach 342 Maiden Flight

I got an Sbach 342 from GeneralHobby.com in July and finally got it up in the air a week ago. I hit the prop on a sub-par landing and I’m now waiting on a replacement. Oh well, hopefully the 3-blade 15×13.75 will be a bit better than the 17×8 I had on it! I’ll come up with a little more comprehensive review on the plane’s flight characteristics and my overall opinion on it in a later thread. The first flight went great and I was pretty impressed by it. My brother filmed the whole thing. We’ll work on his camera work for the next … Continue reading