[LASS Soaring] "Orlando Was Booming Today....What a Day For My LSF5 2 Hour !!!!"

[GordySoar at aol.com]

Even with the time change trickery, manage to make it out to the Buzzards  
field by about 10:30, really about perfect timing.  The air was complicated  
with a light breeze that would gust with the big lift and sink cycles traveling  
the field.
 
I had the World's Heaviest Carbon Supra tuned up and ...repaired ;-(
 
Last time out here one cell of the battery pack had worn thru its neighbors  
insulation and that put it into the top of a tree on a windy day. It blew out  
into the brush below and I had two dings in the leading edge now home to some 
 small Coke Classic aluminum skin.
 
But what I didn't realize is that the horns for the flaps had been forced,  
delaming the area around the round brass horn mounts.  The way I noticed  was 
that I was getting some weird centering and one flap was traveling farther  
than the other.  It sure seemed like some programming thing and I was  cursing my 
9303, or the servos, or my lousy install.  I had putz'ed with  the radio 
travel adjust and centering and got it kind of close but that just  didn't make 
sense because it hadn't done any of that when it was first  built....but the 
delam was about invisible but enough that it kept that one flap  from traveling 
all the way down.
 
I took a break at the end of yesterday, when everyone else had left the  
field to look at everything more closely.  Sure enough the skin was lose as  was 
that horns threaded barrel, between the two it was a LOT.
 
So last nite I went to work with some epoxy and clamps.
 
Any way today it was all good and moving in synchro.
 
We must have launched about a dozen or so times (my Talking timer is always  
set for 10min tasks).
 
I worked on set ups, launch settings, and the ultra secret and tricky JW  
Thermal Mode settings. A very weird but DEFINITELY effective deal.  It is  
extremely strange to work with and can get you into some smeg if you forget to  
switch out of it when the air is neutral or sinky.  When I let a few guys  try it, 
pretty much the response was "flies like crap". :-)....and I am gonna  set up 
everyone of my ships with it...cuz the more I work with it the more sense  
(and fun) it makes.  
 
(don't ask me about it, JW has it on the Horizon 9303 set up tips  site
and no I don't have the link, google it :-).
 
In any case the more I play with the Supra the more I understand how little  
I understand :-) And on the other hand big kudo's to JW for getting me  
interested in 'modes'.  Its a whole other facet of our hobby, kind of a  next step 
kind of thing.
 
My LSF 5  2 hour thermal flight?  Didn't try it :-)

Gordy
 
 
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