My story involves the destruction of my first molded ship and a valuable lesson learned. I had this wonderful flying Xantipa, a 127" 16.5 /1.00 high aspect ration sailplane that Skip imported. Weighed a metric ton but really soars well. About 1000 squares and 83 oz. As a new sailplane pilot the ship was so good it put the hurt on the local Emeralds, Makos, Sapphires, Stork, etc. and I didn't know beans about proper setup.
The locals are all cambering up their entire trailing edge on their lower aspect ratio AMA TD ships and chiding me about my granny launch setup with only flaps deflected so I decide to get a little more aggressive and bring in the ailerons to make it launch even better. Aft CG, fairly small v-tail, little wind, full camber trailing edge, long skinny wings with narrow chord, high start of moderate tension......ta daaaa......disaster in the making! Hard throw, swerve left, right, left, right then full tip stall with ship instantly inverting at about 75-100 ft. of altitude with me pushing forward to try an inverted pull-out but.......forgot to take off the launch camber during this relaxing episode.....ship still attached to hi-start and moving toward stake quickly with me pushing to pull out inverted..... then entry into the most wicked inverted flat spin you can envision with the hi-start giving the inverted flat spin all kinds of energy and rotational speed due to its ongoing downward pull. Ship probably made 20-30 rotations and then impact and here is the sad part.....I think I could have saved it if I would have had the presence of mind to take out the launch camber......but as they say, "I'll never know". Yep.....winches are definitely safer when used my knowledgeable pilots. BCNU Bruce Hobbs RCSE-List facilities provided by Model Airplane News. Send "subscribe" and "unsubscribe" requests to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please note that subscribe and unsubscribe messages must be sent in text only format with MIME turned off. Email sent from web based email such as Hotmail and AOL are generally NOT in text format
