Monday was the day I had planned to take the Raptor flying, sporting a fifteen foot-long ribbon tail as a commemorative flight. However, as I've done once before, I arrived at the field to find I'd left my transmitter at home; I'd used it to set up the Stinger with its new fuselage as well as checking the Fox Glider's prop was spinning OK and left it on the desk.
What made it more disappointing was that it was a spectacularly beautiful morning, and every day since then has been windy and raining, or at least very dull and overcast.
So it was with great happiness that I arrived at the field this morning to find conditions cold and calm but, more importantly, that the resident cloud cover had broken apart enough to allow the sun through for a lovely display of sunrise.
The Fox is flying again as swiftly and beautifully as ever, although it will still spin if pushed to extremis, despite the washout I added to the tips. So now I treat it very gingerly when it's slow and low, but is otherwise a delight to fly.
And so to the big moment, flying the Raptor with a tail; I'd drilled a small hole in its ventral tail skid and looped through a strap, to which I attached the ribbon using velcro. I was a little concerned that drag of the ribbon may cause issues and that the length of it, five time the length of the glider.
As it turned out, the tail shrunk in scale as soon as the Raptor took flight, and could happily have been a couple of metres longer. Nevertheless, the rising sun made a beautiful backdrop to the flight, with the Raptor and its elegant tail reaching out to the sky in remembrance of a lovely soul...
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