ever wanted to fly a shot down army RC target drone

[pipemakermike]

Many years ago when I was a keen RC flyer I taught a lot of people to fly radio controlled models on my local aerodrome.  The aerodrome, Oakington near Cambridge, now the home of an army helicoptor squadron was available at weekends to our flying club. One day a Canadian helicoptor pilot on exchange to the UK came over to us with a strange model under his arm.  He had been on manouvers at the firing range at Otterburn in Northumberland and had noticed a crashed target drone and had dropped down to pick it up.  He later found a second crashed example and gathered up that one as well. He had put the bits together and wanted to see if it could be flown so brought it out to us. It was a heavy polyester fibreglass moulded fusalage with a veneered foam shoulder wing about 50" span powered by a Merdo 61.  I have never flown a more horrible model.  Just keeping it in the air was really hard as it was keen to stall and would drop a wing if you gave it a fierce look.  It is no wonder that so many were shot down and I would expect that many just fell out of the sky due to poor piloting.  I have looked in vain for a picture of the model.

[Sean McEntee]

Many years ago when I was a keen RC flyer I taught a lot of people to fly radio controlled models on my local aerodrome.  The aerodrome, Oakington near Cambridge, now the home of an army helicoptor squadron was available at weekends to our flying club. One day a Canadian helicoptor pilot on exchange to the UK came over to us with a strange model under his arm.  He had been on manouvers at the firing range at Otterburn in Northumberland and had noticed a crashed target drone and had dropped down to pick it up.  He later found a second crashed example and gathered up that one as well. He had put the bits together and wanted to see if it could be flown so brought it out to us. It was a heavy polyester fibreglass moulded fusalage with a veneered foam shoulder wing about 50" span powered by a Merdo 61.  I have never flown a more horrible model.  Just keeping it in the air was really hard as it was keen to stall and would drop a wing if you gave it a fierce look.  It is no wonder that so many were shot down and I would expect that many just fell out of the sky due to poor piloting.  I have looked in vain for a picture of the model.

Some of them do fly very well.  I got some "stick time" on an RQ-11 Raven.  Looks allot like the early HobbyZone Aerobird line.  It is, what I will refer to as "remote influenced" as opposed to remote controlled.  Push the stick to the left and will list lazily in that direction. 

What was particularly interesting was the landing.  Landing procedure is to get it down to no less than 50 feet and hit the "land" button on the top of the controller.  Full up elevator is commanded (too much like a DT on a Free Flight model!) and when it impacts, it breaks apart.  The little privates that I was flying with, who were infantry guys taking a "crash course" on how to fly them, were poo-pooing the landing.  Of course, when I asked them why it broke apart like that, they gave me blank stares, and I had to educate them that breaking up on landing dispurses the energy and prevents components from actually breaking.

The RQ-20 Puma is pretty similar in operation, but twice the size.  The Raven took quite a toss to get it going.  Cant imagine lugging something that big into the air in "full battle rattle".