That would be the Dumpster Diver Special. Built by Watt Moore at last year's Brodak Fly-in, but it ended up that the trash can dive event never happened, so the plane came home to Chester, SC. It's been languishing in his shop, unflown and deprived of glory. Until this past Sunday when Wayne and I paid Watt Field a visit and flew some patterns.
I test flew the Shoestring after some modifications, hoping it might be good for the profile event coming up in a couple of weeks in Huntersville. I don't want to risk my Yak-9 for such nonsense, so I choked the venturi and fed it some 20% nitro, and the TT-25 ran well with no major hiccups that used to plague it. Well, it did fly like a speed limit combat plane, but I was on 58' lines and a bit lean, so we can iron that out easy enough. I parked it after one flight proved it was capable, commenting that it was too much like work. Wayne said it reminded him of my 1/2A antics.
We took it slow, listening to Watts classic stories of everything from building and flying to engineering... the man built a scale model of a Ketone(sp) plant in the 1960s. He was one of the designers and they ran into 3D piping problems stemming from 2D blueprints. The pictures are astounding, a model of a factory... but, as always, I digress. I flew some practice patterns on the Oriental, not too bad, and Wayne flew his Pathfinder, pretty damn good, and Watt watched.
After an afternoon break, Watt had disappeared into his shop, returning with an armload of gear and dumped it by our flightline. Behold, the raggedy neglected old DDS. What a site. It was a site that would make your eyes sore. A couple of square sticks of pallet wood or something with an engine serving to hold the front together. A foam slab for a wing and a half pound of zip ties holding it all together. I imagine Banjock had something to do with this atrocity too. Well, you can see for yourself, because here's the video. I'm disappointed that the credits are hard to read, but Wayne made sure I included Allen Buck in the "Thanks" column. He was nice enough to come all the way from Pennsylvania and cut down two big plane eating trees while he was here. So special thanks, Allen, we do appreciate that.
Without further rambling, turn up the volume and go big screen. Click it down to 480p if it's jerky.
Here's the goods:
Topic: Incredible flight of the DDS! (Read 11470 times)