Well, what an interesting contest. Friday I came out and crashed in practice -- the Flight Streak was exceedingly sluggish and this apparently helped induce a line tangle at the handle from giving it
way too much down. My lines tangled on the first down-corner of the outside square. Fortunately I remembered the tip I got here about stepping into the plane to open the turn up and pulling back to tighten -- I was able to bring the plane into the pavement at a shallow enough angle that both blades of the prop got worn off, I lost the fin, sanded a good half inch off the canopy, and did no other damage.
So Friday night was spent gluing the fin back on and putting the canopy back together.
Saturday was Sportsman NW Profile. I put some tail weight in the streak an
boy did it fly better. It did the wingover as smartly as you please -- then promptly crapped out in the inverted half-lap of the reverse wingover. Then, it did it again for flight #2. Then, after I thought I had the problem licked, I went out to the practice circle after the contest, did a half loop to inverted flight -- and the engine crapped out
again.
I'm still not sure what changed between Friday, when the engine ran fine but I tangled the lines, and Saturday, when the tank wouldn't behave -- but something sure did.
Later on that day, I was lamenting the fact that I didn't give into temptation and order some Hayes tanks last Sunday. Our club prez overheard me, and had me stop by his house on the way home for a 3-oz Hayes tank.
Thank You Don Currey
Saturday night was spent putting that Hayes tank onto my old reliable Skyray.
Today, I came out bright and early in the morning, and -- finally, for the first time ever -- put in an official flight in a contest that was as good as I've been doing in practice. Even with an overrun (which I kinda sorta purposely allowed, because I've been having fuel system problems
all winter so I just filled the tank all the way), I got a 352.5. That's small potatoes for most of you, but not only good for me, but it's smack in the middle of the range that I thought I'd score.
It's a good thing that I'm buoyed by that success (still!!), because on flight #2, with 2.5oz of fuel in the tank, I completely flubbed the downward leg of the triangle (possibly due to sleep deprivation), and reduced my airplane inventory by one. Fortunately, while muffler has an ear broken off, and the engine has the matching ear partially broken off, the engine appears to have survived. And, I'm
still happy that I've broken the "only fly good in practice" curse at least once.