I felt relaxed enough to try acrobatics I had never tried before and then felt brave enough to add the video camera to the plane for some aerial video photography. This time I was expecting an unstable plane and managed to re-trim the model. The result - some somewhat interesting footage. I'm currently fighting my computer and am unable to convert the mpeg-2 stream from the camera into something suitable for upload to youtube to that will have to wait.
The day did end in disaster however. On the last flight of an otherwise perfect day, I ran out of fuel, called "dead stick" and glided in for my final approach, lined up dead centre of the runway about 40 metres high when another model flew straight through me, the model that is. The model in two pieces, a tail piece - cruelly severed 4 fifths of the way down the fuselage and the rest, plummeted into the ground. The damage was pretty bad - broken tail, fuselage, engine mounts, propeller, wing servo and wing leading edge.
Later on Saturday night, after everyone had gone to bed, I looked over the damage and started gluing, replacing and improvising fixes such that by 4:15am I went to bed with some hope that it may possibly fly again.
Sunday it did fly, like a wounded phoenix it limped skyward held together with tape, a healthy dollop of glue and all the will I could muster. After landing and making a few adjustments it was flying similar to how it had before the crash. I say "similar" because knowing what it has been though I can't get rid of the feeling that it is going to fall apart in the air and come crashing to the ground again.
Sorry about the plane. Transcode works nicely for converting stuff but then I have spent plenty of time fighting with that. I would be interested to see the footage.
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