Up, Up & Away!

Those of you that know me know how much I hate flying! Can't stand it! I'd much sooner keep my feet firmly planted on the ground. However, I have discovered that model planes are an entirely different ball-game. With a model plane, you can keep your feet firmly planted on the ground and yet still be "in-control" of the plane. (Out of control is more like but more on that shortly.) One of the Professors at work brought a radio controlled glider plane into our office today, he said that he'd had enough of crashing it (and having to pay $50 for new wings every time he crashed it) so he was giving it to us. I promptly set about charging the battery, which was more difficult than you might think, considering the charger is designed to run off 110V. Time to fire up the variac. After charging for several hours I bought the plane home, assembled it and took it across to the local soccer club grounds. After several bursts of the plane going about a metre and then nose diving I realised that the off/on switch on the plane was dodgy and so was the connector from the battery to the plane. After fixing these faults I finally manged to get about 20seconds of decent flight before piling the plane into a stone fence and smashing the propeller to bits. I think the tail rudder might be out of alignment. I bought the plane home again, found a replacement propeller in the box and put it on. By this stage however the battery was getting down a bit so as soon as you touched either of the control levers, power was diverted from the main engine and the plane proceeded to nose dive. Looks like I'll have to take it back to work tomorrow, stick it back on the variac and have another shot tomorrow night.