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Thursday, October 16, 2014

Rotmilan Midi, kit overview



This is the shorter version of the Rotmilan which just won the F3F WC 2014 in František Ruisl's hands. With a wingspan of 2.86m and length of 1.47m, it features the same HN section than the Standard Rotmilan, It is made by RTGmodel (Website not updated yet with the Rotmilan Midi). I received my Rotmilan Midi in Donovaly when I was there for the F3F world championship. The color scheme is mine and based on the constraint that the control surfaces are moulded with an angle to allow the moulding of the wipers at once.

Let's have a look to the kit. Fuselage is made from Kevlar and Carbon. It is 2.4 friendly as the front part is kevlar only. The ballast tube and the servo tray, as a single piece is already installed in the fuselage. The tray is designed to receive 12mm standard servos like the MKS 6125e or equivalent. The hole is at the right size to not damage the wire when inserting the servos in its location.

Canopy is fiber glass with the lock system already in place.

The ballast tube occupies lot of place in the fuselage so the routing of the wires from the wing connectors to the receivers is pretty tricky. It requires to solder the green plug with the wires in place.

The elevator control rods are snakes using fiberglass core and teflon sleeve. They are guided into a plastic sleeve. No clevises or couplers are provided. In brief, the fuselage requires very little work.

The tailplanes are identical to the standard version and include the carbon rod joiners. 2 metal pins are here also for a better positionning. They still use the very simple and efficient aluminium control horns to be connected to a metal clevis

Wings are simple carbon using herex and spread tow fabric. The servos holes are reinforced with some extra carbon to avoid skin deformation while installing the servos frame. There is no ballast compartiment in the wings. The large carbon joiner allows to use brass ballast in it (not provided), to be added to the 900g of fuselage ballast provided with the kit (10 slugs).

RTGmodel has been the first manufacturer to use RDH/LDS. As it is built in, the installation on the control surface side is finished, and removable using a tool provided in the kit, a long brass rod that allow to extract/put the RDH axis from the root chord.

What to say about the moulding and finish quality. The Rotmilan moulding quality is absolutely top notch. Fit and finish are just superb: The illustration is how the joiner fit in the wings and the fuselage. no blocking point and no slop at all. When removing the joiner, you ear the "pop" sound.

To finish with the kit overview, here are the component weight:
  •     Fuselage: 387g
  •     Right Wing: 586g
  •     Left wing: 592g
  •     Wing Joiner: 88g
  •     Left tail+ joiner: 40g
  •     Right tail + joiner: 42g
  •     Total 1735g
  •     Ballast provided: 892g


Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Font D'urle 2014, the french longpan slope !

Font D'urle 2014 will remain in the memories for a long long time. The reason is that conditions were super fast and that the french F3F record has been beated several times in few minutes, by different pilots. The contest took place on a high cliff in the south vercors (french alps) with strong wind (14 to 16 m/s vertical). We have the authorization to fly there only once a year, and were are accompagnied by an eco-guard to check that vultures living there are not disturbed by the gliders.
On sunday, the wind was so strong that we had to stop the contest after two rounds, because almost all pilots damaged their plane during the landing in a huge rotor, despite walking far from the edge to escape this rotor. With 27.28 seconds, Frédéric Hours established a new french F3F record flying an Alliaj HM (in fact the early prototype of Alexis Maréchal). Jean-Luc Foucher and Allan Cohen joined the 27.xx club, both also on Alliaj HM. Personnaly, I achieve my personnal best with 28,01s with my Needle 100 DSL.



Below the video of the record:


Icare Model show 2014

The 20 and 21th of september.

The now famous and popular Icare Model show (Coupe Icare) is since few year having also an aeromodelling show where it is possible to see all type of aeroplanes from the drone to the big aerobatic plane, etc ... Weather was not exceptionnal this year but we could however do many demonstrations from 10am  to 4pm. Less spectators because of the weather. Here is my photo album shooted on sunday

The Beaufortain, Savoie

End of september, I visited another slope paradise (Beaufortain, Savoie) not very far from Grenoble. I took only my Weasel and flew 5 minutes at le Cormet de Roselend. There are plenty of slopes in the area and some of them have the Mont blanc in background. If you add to this the fact that the beaufort cheese (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaufort_cheese) is produced there ... yum yum ...
A very nice place to go with stunning landscapes as you can see on this photo album !

Flying over Grenoble

I had the chance to enjoy a flight but also pilot few minutes a Taurus from Pipistrel (World’s first side-by-side ultralight powered glider). We did some slope soaring on a cliff above Grenoble. A 1 hour flight in excellent conditions, ended by a smooth kiss landing at Le Versoud airfield. Thanks to Olivier Finck (http://www.airtech-rc.com/) for this flight !


 

Jehnedi (CZ) F3G Eurotour final contest report

Text and photos:  Sebastian Haase (German version below) In my last and first report on the new, young and upcoming FAI class F3G, Pierre an...