Video & Flight report - Shoestring Stunter (Maiden V.2.0)

I woke up excited today, my first flight of a large plane and the maiden voyage of my Shoestring Stunter. Over the last few days, I had e-mailed a couple of interested friends that said they wanted to be there. So I had a big breakfast for a big day flying and headed out to the club field about 11:00.

No one was there yet which suited me, I could relax and make new bladders for the two Baby Flite Streaks. Still nobody there and too windy to fly the babies. By 2:00 I had the lines hooked up and everything sitting on the circle ready to fuel and go, and I was contemplating making a pull line stooge and going at it alone, when a truck and trailer pulled in. It was a couple of guys I haven't met yet. We chatted and I told them what I was up to, and needed launch assistance, but no apparent interest.

After they flew for about a half hour, one of them finally decided to launch for me. So off we went to the CL circle. I wanted to just fly on a sip of fuel to see if it was trimmed and airworthy, so I put an ounce in it and cranked up. After warming up I had the needle where I wanted it, got up to pick up the lines and it shut off. It ran a lot longer than that in the shop Friday. So I put in some more fuel and got out there and waved it off.

I gave it too much up elevator and it jumped straight into the air without rolling(point deduction) and around it went for the first lap. The engine sounded good. I had put a 9x5 prop on it, an old style wide Master Airscrew, and it flew flat and stable completely unaffected by a pretty stiff breeze. Y'all had told me it would pull pretty hard, but I had no idea it would pull like a solid clay red brick, damn, can't fingertip this plane like I do the little ones.

So after two laps I flipped it over to fly inverted and was surprised at how quickly it snapped over and leveled off. I'm used to having to coax a plane back flat after flipping it, but this was as smooth as ice. It sputtered for a moment during the turn, but kept running fine. I pulled an outside loop with no problem except it sputtered again. Went back to normal flight and did a loop on the next two laps, both times sputtering , once causing loss of altitude and a brush with death, but it recovered and flew on. About that time, maybe a minute into the flight it died right as it was coming into the hard crosswind and I had to trot backwards to bring it in. It touched down with a tailwind rolling briefly and flipped over it's nose. I cursed my poor landing, but there was no one there to hear me. My assistant was half way back to the RC field. It didn't scratch any of the pretty off though.

I don't know if the needle wasn't set quite right, but the engine shouldn't have sputtered on every loop. I was able to pull 1/2oz out of it that hadn't been used. I put the syringe on the other tube and drew only air. Given the opportunity I could have tried different needle settings, and tried the other tube out of the tank, but it wasn't to be. No one else ever showed up. Strange, Sundays have been busy every time I've ever been there. It was 80, sunny and fine.

I got tired of hanging around and went to pack, and noticed the wind had died a little. So I got the babies out and flew both of them for about five flights. In fact I flew the crap out of them... in sort of an aggressive irritated way. Busted two props, but no wood. I headed home, not nearly as happy as I had hoped to be. I was tired, but not from what I had intended to accomplish.

No videos, in fact the camera stayed in the car. But at home I took some post flight photos. Y'all haven't seen it since it was completely finished, so here:

Check out my tank strap, made from a soup can(and I definitely need to shorten that needle):