I used to fly alone allot. One day, I was flying my now nostalgic
Sundancer from a histart. Now, I had developed a rhythm of turn on
transmitter, turn on receiver, pull back, hook up and launch. That day, I
couldn't seem to get more than 5 minutes and wondered if the plane was out
of trim. One one launch, I forget the turn on receiver step. The Sundancer
tracked up pretty well and released. Upon iniiating the first turn, I
discovered my mistake. The plane drifted off to the right and I thought it
would land in the next field so I scaled a fence (I was younger then) and
tried to keep it in sight - it had started to come down. Well, completely
unaided by my pilot skills, it hooked a decent thermal and landed very
safely in the side yard of a house about 3/4 mile down wind - total time for
the flight was about 20 minutes. Lessons learned:
- I now ALWAYS do a surface "wiggle" before I launch and ask flying buddies
to do the same before they do.
- I now ALWAYS look to see what I'm about to walk through as I got a
terrible case of poison ivy that day.
- Now, I don't always blame the trim as a properly trimmed plane flies well
in spite of the well-meaning pilot.
Older and wiser,
Jim Deck
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