Flying the Hornet in the 'cane

[321]

The outer reaches of Hurricane Frances gave me the perfect opportunity to see how much wind the Hornet 2 would fly in. Having long ago lost my fear of flying in wind, I took it out to the Cape and then took off after the wind almost blew it out of my hand while carrying it to the runway. My guess is the winds were 20+ mph and gusting higher.

It was some of the most exciting flying yet! Mainly, the flights consisted of straight upwind and downwind legs with tight 180's upwind and lazy 180's downwind to form a long, narrow circuit. After the long flights upwind, I tried to time hard turns with wind gusts to get maximum groundspeed on full collective flyby's about eight feet off the deck. Woohoo! The Hornet flew by FAST for its size. Somewhere around double its normal forward speed capability. The only other micro aircraft I've seen go by that quick was the Morris micro Bandit EDF jet.

Finally, with the winds increased, it didn't want to return after turning upwind. It got smaller even though I had full collective and was battling it out with the pitchiness this heli has when flying forward too fast. Had to sustain this or else it would've lost ground rapidly. Just as I was about to make an ugly emergency landing way out in the field, the wind let up enough to get the heli back to the runway. Had to land on the front tips of the skids, which looked pretty neat. Wow, what a rush but that was enough.

Ended up with a total of three flights and 24 minutes of flight time, logged as "high wind flying". Yes, the Hornet can be flown on a windy day but it demands you stay sharp.

[WillJames]

Sounds like fun!!

[Hotshot Charlie]

Hey MrC,

Sounds like you pushed the limits !!! I guess the moral of your story, "In high wind, don't get to far down wind, or you might have to do some walking!"

Stay safe and have fun !