Well since I mentioned that I picked up a plane I know you’re all dying to hear how it went. Honestly, I can’t stop grinning about it.

This last weekend my wife, my friend Nabih, his son and I took my first r/c plane ever: the newly assembled Super Cub to the local soccer fields for her maiden voyage.

Although I fully expected the plane to crash and break at some point in the day, secretly I hoped she wouldn’t get a scratch on her.

Having my buddy around was really helpful (as he has RC plane experience). We talked out a game plan for getting the bird in the air and adjusting the trim (although we didn’t think to do a hand toss flight first). He also tossed the plane for the first flight so I could focus entirely on the controls which was very helpful.

(nice photo by this guy! isn’t this a great shot?) Photo: snow55

Before I get ahead of myself, I should mention that my dreams for returning home with out a scratch were dashed before the plane even took its first flight. Nabih brought a small scale Cessna 180 and given that I’ve never really watched an RC plane in action very closely, I wanted to see him fly it for a bit.

His plane had some difficulty with the battery so while he was troubleshooting that I decided to taxi my plane around to get a feel for the controls. I think I made it about 6 feet when the propeller hit a roll of packing tape I brought for any repairs and promptly broke in half.

Oh well, I’m glad I got that behind me so quickly Now time to have fun … and fly!

Winds were light at about 5 mph with a moderate cloud cover so conditions were close to perfect, no excuses now.

But Can She Fly?

As I mentioned above, Nabih agreed to toss the plane so I could concentrate on flying, I rolled it up to full throttle and he gave her a good chuck…

She leveled off and slowly climbed in front of us as I worked to keep the wings level. Which I should mention was only work because my hands were shaking so much and doing more harm than good.

Once the plane had some altitude I basically took my hands off the controls and we adjusted the trim. I was so nervous I didn’t want to take my eyes off the plane or the control sticks so Nab made the adjustments for me as I called out “left”, “right” or “up”, “down”.

I made a few turns and fought a bit with the wind but it didn’t take more that a few minutes for me to get excited about attempting to land.

Flying is easy.. getting it back to earth is the hard part

I must say, there’s something about seeing that plane come in for a landing that is just a joy to watch.

For my first two approaches I came in a bit hot which ended up in a slow nose-over (no damage taken). However, after watching my buddy make a landing my 3rd and final landing of the day were near perfect which was extremely rewarding.

We flew only one battery (about 15 minutes of flying) as the wind started to pick up and we called it a day.

Like I said when I began the post, I can’t stop grinning about the experience. Looking forward to flight#2; hopefully I’ll be able to take some original pictures!