Stick Built Redwing

[Bark65]

I have not posted here in quite some time. Here is a shot of my stick built Frog Redwing that I completed in the spring. I've had flights close to a minute so far.

[Dave Robelen]

Hi Bark,
Thanks for sharing. It's good to have you back posting your free flight adventures. That is a really nice looking model, although the wings look more yellow than red. Perhaps the lighting played tricks? :-)
Cheers, Dave

[Bark65]

Dave,
Don't know why I settled on yellow wings. When a plane is named "Redwing" I guess they want you to cover the wings in red. I'll blame it on not paying attention again.
:-) The first Redwing I built I covered it in blue. Can you believe that? Guess I need to build another one and cover it in red this time.

I kind of got away from RC since I got involved in building these rubber powered planes. My original intentions were to build one Rubber powered plane just for the fun of it, then enlarge the plans and fit it up with RC equipment. One year later and I'm still building Rubber powered planes and can't seem to get interested in RC again. It's a real challenge to get these things to fly well. Guess that's why I'm so hooked on them.

[Dave Robelen]

Hi Bark,
At one point before retirement, my job involved almost a constant diet of R/C research models. My solution was to take up rubber powered free flight models as a hobby. That lead to some years of building and flying both duration and scale free flight. I still enjoy it a great deal, perhaps because of the challenge you mentioned. The bummer is when you get handy with these things and start making long flights, fields are hard to come by. You could drive through my neighborhood and get the impression that there was open land all over, but actually the farmers are raising either cattle or hay on almost every acre. This lead to my having more of an interest in the peanut size models with lower performance, just to have more opportunities to fly.
Cheers, Dave

[Bark65]

I have the same problem here concerning a good flying site. I built a Cloud Tramp that needs lots of space to fly. I've flown it at a free flight meet in Raeford, NC back in May. The meet was held at a sod farm and we had a huge field to fly on that day. It was great. I have not been able to fly it lately on my small field at home. I'm afraid of losing it. Same goes for the Redwing. I have to wait for a dead calm day to fly it. I've been flying Prairie bird #2 regularly though. P-bird #1 flew away on me. I have it trimmed to fly in tight right circles to keep it on the small field.

[Bark65]

Went back to the sod farm in Raeford, NC this Saturday for another free flight meet. Got to see many well constructed and great flying planes. I was able to get many flights in and had an opportunity to meet up with a really good bunch of free flight modelers. My green and yellow Redwing resides in Raeford now...flew out of sight. It was really great to see it flying so high and for so long. Back to the building board to construct another one.

Good flying to all,
Bark