Weathered and carnival-ed out.

It's been raining since very early this morning. This weekend the park that is my favorite flying spot has a carnival. I went to the park in Walker yesterday and got in a few flights with the new fuel and bigger engines. The castor I found is the same or better than the stuff I would have had to buy at more that twice the price. The grass needed cutting but I flew anyway..
  Today with the rain I did some cleaning in the shop and changed to a matched set of wheels on the newer Nomad plane. The next contest is in 5 weeks. It may take that long for the water to evaporate so I can fly again. The soil is all clay and nothing soaks in, it just slowly runs off or evaporates.
  Me and the Bootlegger went to the speed shop and bought some methanol. I got 15 gallons he got 5. I need to pay him for it as I didn't have enough money. We bought some about 6 months ago and the price was $4.00/gallon. This time it's $5.00/gallon. It's Bushes fault. That raised the price of a gallon of fuel to $10.25. That's still half the price of the store bought fuel.

A great find.

I burn a lot of model airplane fuel. The brand name fuel from a hobby shop is about $20.00 a gallon. I used to buy a 54 gallon drum from Red Max fuels but shortly after the haz mat fee just about doubled the cost. I started buying the components of the fuel and mixing them myself saving about 40% of the price of store bought fuel. Castor oil is the main ingredient for lubrication and nitro methane is the power ingredient methanol makes up the bulk of the fuel. I've been getting the methanol from drag strips, hardware stores and speed shops. The castor oil came from Fox who makes engines, fuel and parts for model airplanes. Fox stopped making and selling hobby related stuff a couple years ago and Sig Mfg. bought their inventory including the $20.00 a gallon castor oil. I had to buy 4 gallons a while back and Sig had raised the price to $25.00 a gallon which wasn't too bad. I was down to one gallon left and looked up the price on the Sig web site. Over $50.00 a gallon but they would be nice and sell it for $38.00 a gallon. Shipping is extra. I did a search on the web and found a place called Bulk Apothecary. They have castor oil for under $17.00 a gallon. But the question is is it usable for lubrication in model airplane engines? I took a chance and ordered a gallon to test. I mixed up a small batch and ran it in one of my engines here at the house. It worked fine for the test. I was confident enough to order a 5 gallon batch of castor and I used the first gallon to mix up a 5 gallon batch of fuel. I took the opportunity to test the fuel in the air this morning. I ran three flights using the new fuel and two flights using the old fuel. I couldn't see any change in power or anything between the fuels. I tried a second plane with the new fuel and it ran perfectly also. I still have one gallon of Sig castor and 5 more coming plus the five gallons of fuel I mixed and three gallons of fuel from the next to last gallon of Sig castor. I figure I have enough castor to make up 35 gallons of fuel not counting the 8 gallons of fuel I have mixed already.

Stormy.

The weather has been bad today. I may get in some flying Sunday morning as the forecast looks good for then.
I went to Office Depot yesterday and got copies of my Nomad plans made so I could spruce them up a bit. Since the flood and the regular person retiring I've had poor results from them. It seems they don't know how to use the 36 inch paper which would get the plans down on two sheets and not four sheets of 24 inch.Fortunately I had a full sheet of the ribs that I used for the first plane. Because I had enlarged the plans from a magazine centerfold they are slightly oversize but not too much.

Diesel fuel.

Big spender that I am I went to the gas station and ordered $1.20 on pump 4. I only wanted  that much as I figured the mower engine would be cleaned out by the time I used it up. Also I wanted an accurate measure of a gallon and this would give a spot to mark a half gallon for when I mix my fuel. I added a little 30 wt. oil to 10 ounces of diesel and filled the oil sump of the engine. I started it and ran it for a few seconds then shut it off. The drain still looked dirty so I repeated the procedure. After that I filled it with diesel and sloshed it back and forth for a while and dumped that out. That looked pretty good so I filled it with oil ready for use.
  I took the new Nomad to the field along with the remaining Flite Streak. The one that I burned my finger on yesterday. The Nomad flew perfectly throughout the full pattern of maneuvers on it's second flight. I can't point out any trim changes to be made either. The Flite Streak flew pretty good for what it is. I haven't flown it in a few years.

Old planes.

 I grabbed two older planes that haven't been flown in a couple years. It took a bit of work to clean them and a little work to start the engines. After that the Flite Streak was designed with a single wheel for landing gear. Unless I have another person to launch it the gyroscopic precession  of the spinning propeller will lean the wing onto the left tip. And without assistance that dragging tip will turn the plane into the circle where I am. So I removed that single gear and made up a set of normal two wheel gear for it. Only a badly burned finger so it was a success. The other plane has gear that I can use if it fails to fly right.
  I drained the oil from the rescued mower and it's still dirty tan color. Maybe a few more changes and things will be clean again.

First flight.

I put one ounce of fuel in the tank which would give me about 2 minutes of flight time. The plane flew perfectly without any tweaks to anything. The second flight will be a full pattern flight, it's that good. I'm getting better at "bench trimming" that's what it's called when you adjust everything to where you figure it should be before flying it. The new landing gear and gear covers are visible in the picture.

Gear change.

I didn't like the look of bare wire showing on the landing gear. I also had bent the wire wrong. When I bent the 90 degree for the wheel axle I had it pointing towards the wing tip instead of towards the fuselage. I noticed that a few days ago when I went to make some spats to cover the wire. I had enough 1/8 inch music wire so I made a new set of landing gears and cut out a pair of gear covers to hide the wire. A heavy coat of Gloss Cherry paint and some glue and the wires are covered.There's a good chance I'll bring it to Doyle's Bayou Park tomorrow and try to get in a first flight with it.