Caught some thermals yesterday , take a good look , the plane is up there. the picture was taken almost straight up . the plane is the small red dot to the lef of centre.

The pictures are all fairly high res , be sure to click on them to see the big picture.

Some pictures of the WD flying at home. This is a great experience , but the landings are a bit scary. I would love to do an aerial video here.

Did some dodgy flights with a cellphone straped to the WD , I struggled to get altitude with the extra 130g of cargo but performance increased slightly after I made a proper mount for the cell.
Apart from that I love the WD more eerytime i fly. i have moved from the airstrip to a smaller space around some buildings with some wind and it handled fine , next I flew in strong wind with the cell and that was fine , Then I tried flying in a very small space close to my house , the takeoff and landing was on a small straight section of dirtroad with trees a palm plantation on one side and rocky "koppies " on the other, and the eaasy handling of the WD made it possible for my to fly around and land without problem.
My house stands on a small koppie about 15 m above the fields below with the ground dropping away steeply almost right from the house. After some more airial videos this morning while packing up i accidentaly knocked the rudder agains the vehicle and broke it right at the control horn. I have been wanting to extend the rudder a bit so I decided to make a new one and make it about 30 longer , and change the botom angle a bit to allow more elevator travel, The result was so good that I emediately walked to my front lawn and hand launched my plane into the slight updraft coming up the slope. It flew just perfectly, I gained altidtude very fast by keeping in the lift zone and now my english fails me , i cannot describe that feeling , it was just perfect , I did not want to come down. Then i realized i haven't planned my landing yet , and with the wind comming up the slope i could not come in that way. The only space i had available was on one side of the house, with the telephone and powerlines at the aproach end. the powerlines was too high to dropin over them , so i had to come in from the side , making a sharp turn to line up with the small level patch of grass. I pulled it of , and emediately called the wife out to take a vid , and with not much power left over in the battery launched the WD again. Keeping it close for the vid i made a few turns and pulled it in for the landing. I have watched the vid about 20 times already.
here is a screenshot of the video.

First aerobatics

I went out in a steady breeze yesterday, determined not to wait for the weekend . The only trouble with the wind was that it was comming from about 10 o clock , this made for interesting take-offs . On the ground with the speed still low the wind pushed the upwind wing down , as the speed picked up and the wing started generating lift the wind wanted to pick that wing up, this meant aileron and rudder inputs which made my elevator control a bit shoddy , almost stalled the first 2 times. I flew around a bit , getting used to the wind wich is fine once you are up there , practiced landings , wich I ended up doing across the runway into the wind after the first one nearly ended in the only bush around. Then I went for altitude , wich didnt work as it was overcast and the light not good enough and I ended up deciding to do a loop . The loop is easy , just go full throttle , pick up speed and pull back . easy. Dit 3 more and decided that was enough. The loops were easy , so a roll would be ok i though. HELP! , once inverted it started to dive and I started doing everything wrong , I eneded up saving it about 2 meters from the ground. Won't try that again soon, i could see the wing bending under the strain , I though they were gonna break. So it was a good day all in all , the wind a bit bad but a lot of experience gained.

More flights

This is my settup , WD with new wing therefore without stickers and a ery large runway all for myself.

I went flying again this morning , 5 or 6 flights , depending what counts as a flight, and i can feel that i am less tense about everything now , enjoing it much more. the landing gear on the WD is realy not great , even a slight bump when landing will bend them , but as i like to take off i will keep them as long as the last.Thanks for the advice guys, I cycled my old battery about 4 times now , flying untill the plane doesn't want to stay up anymore , and then draining it further on the ground, but it stil has only about 80 % of the power of the new one.

Second attempt at RC flying

WOW ! found myself phoning everybody to tell them , even some wo don,t know that i am trying rc. I started out following the half throttle taxi plan , but it quickly seemed that there was enough lift and i experimented by puling back , and up she goes. Then the adrenalin kicked in , and it was all i could do to keep it in the air the first couple of seconds . After I got some altitude I started relaxing a bit , and it kept on flying without me making micro adjustment all the time. It was then I realized what the experts mean when they caution a beginner about "over control", the plane was flying almost by itself. i gues the sportster does not have all the dihedral (hope the spelling is ok) of the WD slowflyer , because I would have to level the wings out ocasionaly.ok , now I'm in the air and I have not realy prepared myself for it , I made a couple of circuits and tried lining it up with the runway . Much easier than FMS . Lined it up , a little skew , correcting , over correcting , correcting again , and then the model was on theground.Easy as that. ok , the landing was abit rough , but only the landig gear was bent a bit , bent it back again , line it up and take off again .start playing a bit , come in to land again. then i decided the battery must be almost spent , so taxi around to deplete it more , but on one taxi it was going so good i pulled back slightly and up i go again , this time i did not stay up so long because i suspected the battery was about done so lined up and had a very good landing . Now i put in my second battery with the idea to take it up and do some fine tuning on the trim of the plane , only to find that i have forgotten to charge it.I was almost glad , 3 succesful flights was enough for one day , almost a remaiden because my previous flights was about a year back.Looking back , the more I flew , the more the plane handled like the model in FMS . on my last landing it was coming down to quickly , i was gliding it in with no throttle , I simply pulled it up and it started flying again , jut like in FMS . once i realized this it was easy to land it like i would in FMS.The stall speed of the WD sportster is lower than i thought , now to charge my batteries and up again.Oh , yeah , the inner tube rubber bands work fine.

RC Flying

I have taken up RC flying about a year ago , bought myself a Wing Dragon complete package as a trainer. There was one on sale for a good price , and I took it only to find out later that it was a more advanced model. I went on anyway and tried to fly it, here is an acount of the first 4 flights.

(it may well serve as a warning to others who want try going it on their own)First flightduration: 3 secondswhat happened: Stalled, crashed.damage: nonediagnoses: underestimated the speed necessaryfor takeoff and kept pulling back on the elevator. When the craft did take of, it stalled and crashed.Lesson: You need a large area, and give it time to pick up speed.Flight 2duration: 8 secondswhat happened: lifted of, ran out of space, turned around, cot confused, crasheddamage: wing moved backwards till prop caught it, but only small hole. undercarriage bent.diagnoses: Got confused when turned around. The real craft does not turn as smooth as the simulator.Lesson: go to bigger area so that you do not have to turn so quickly or tightly. throttle back when crash imminentFlight 3duration: about 45 secondswhat happened: wind a bit strong, but impatient, so I take of. Going into wind is slower, so easier to fly. Reach end of open field at good height and turn. Aircraft then rockets off with the wind and I turn it just in time over some trees. wild aerobatics in the turbulence above/behind the trees, but manage to get over them. Coming in to land a gust pushes plane back and nose into ground.damage: wing moves again and prop clip it on the other side. wing symmetrical again.diagnoses: nice to fly into strong wind, but when you have to turn around it gets uglylesson: Get even bigger field(bigger than rugby field), throttle back when crash imminent, wait for wind to die down.Flight 4duration: about 30 secondswhat happened: went to airfield, took of into slight but smooth wind. Nice climb, getting the controls right, turn around, when passing me , got confused again when wing dip to one side, make wrong adjustment and crash upside down into ground.damage: wing and rudder is write-off diagnoses: Was not flying high enough to correct mistake.Lesson: fly higher, get something even easier to fly.It is less expensive to learn this and more from someone else.