Nuremberg 2012: Robbe new items

Here is the new catalogue 2012 from Robbe.

Nuremberg 2012: Graupner new items

Some new sailplanes with Tangent. Catalogue is here (54 Mo, so be patient)

No Risk No Fun- crazy horst

A Crazy best of 2011 video from Horst Henchel, using a onboard cam on a Rookie. Fasten your seat belt and get ready, this is great flight sequences !!!!

International Toy Fair Nuremberg 2012

The International Toy Fair Nuremberg 2012 is next week. Many new items will be revealed. This is the time also for the various brand to publish their catalog. Hacker already did it so you can download it here:

Gyll Concept article in Modele Magazine

My review of the electronic switches from Gyll Concept has been published in the february issue of the french specialized magazine "Modèle Magazine".

EasyStar 2 shooting session

Yesterday, at lunch break, before the bad weather comes back today, I organised a short shooting session, asking 2 workmates to join, and take care of the pictures while I was piloting. Shooting is a difficult exercice and need some practice. Vijay, the photographer used first his EOS 30D, then continued with my brave old 10D, equipped with the 70-300 ISM lens. I'm very happy with the result, as some of these pictures will be published in a paper magazine. Xavier, the othe workmate did some video, so I will prepare a video about the making of. We did 500+ pictures, and at the end, I selected about 50 of them (usual ratio) that I uploaded on picasa:

Mistral Soaring

Yeasterday was the second contest of the regional winter league. 13 Pilots met near Marseille. Weather forecast was pretty good with 40 km/h of wind, sun, and about 13°. Unfortunately, the wind speed was higher when we arrived on the slope, and increased until miday to reach 30m/s dusts.

We had the time to complete 2 rounds, doing 2 runs in the same flight. Best time went to Allan Cohen in 35s with his Alliaj HM. Condition were very turbulent and everybody had to fight with the wind.

Then we decided to drive downhill to discover a rügen like slope along a canal. Wind was lower, but still turbulent. Few pilots try this liliputian slope and try to find the right trajectory, stay in the air, and accelerate. That was a bit challenging !

We also saw the new prodij HM from Aeromod in Action. Alexis did the 2 rounds with it, agains F3F ships and managed to do very close times around 39 to 40s. The Prodij HM is pretty impressive, looking exactly like his big brother the Alliaj HM. Amazing energy retention, carrying ballast like nobody else !!! We admired a kit that Alexis had with him. The moulding quality is superb, and has improved. Definitively a nice 60 inches sailplane.

A 5/6 people team from the TV, coming from Paris, spent the day with us, filming the flights, interviewing the national F3F team members. They are preparing a documentary about the mistral wind, and some other famous wind in the world. This serie of ducomentary will be broadcast in 2013 on Ushuaïa TV.

Here are few pictures taken yeasterday.

Pike Perfection pictures

I just received these pictures from Samba Model:

EasyStar 2 video

Here is the video I did last sunday. Hope you will like it :)

Pike Perfection

Samba model will release very soon a new F3J model called Pike Perfection, in order to follow the current F3J trend. 3.66m wingspan for a flying weight between 1700 and 2000g, and a tailplane looking like the supra or the Icon. Not much information, but some pictures posted on RCgroups by the US distributor of Samba Model.

Easy Star 2 maiden

This afternoon, by a beautiful weather and 4 to 5°, I maidened my EasyStar 2. It has been a super experience, and I really enjoyed this plane. It offers the perfect balance with compactness, gliding ratio, manoeuvrability, some aerobatic capabilities, and easy piloting. In addition a 2200 mAh 3S battery give plenty of flying time. I did some video footage so stay tuned !

MPX EasyStar 2

Here are the pictures I took today of the kit. I did nothing yet on it, it comes like this. More to come, stay tuned !

my new molded plane :) !!!

I received yesterday the EasyStar 2 for review for a french Magazine. This is a RR version where you just need to add a battery, a receiver and go to fly. Quality is absolutely superb. Moulding is amazing, the fit and finish of each part is unbelievable for a foamie and the design is extremely well though. Multiplex really made a step forward !

Weasel Black Edition maiden ... finally !

After 2 months of non-flying, I finally had the chance to fly a bit. It was the opportunity to maiden my Weasel Black Edition from Dream Flight. I found a micro slope (5m high) where I could do some close flying. Later, in the afternoon, I tried another slope (on a rounded hill), much bigger, but with some tree lines. I used the same settings than on my first Weasel, and everything went perfectly well. I enjoyed again this little foamy bird which provides so much fun and pleasure. It should be mandatory for every sloper to have one. If I should stay alone on an island and have the choice to keep one RC plane, it would be the Weasel. The Weasel BE flies exactly like the white version.

New DS world Record: 487 mph !!!

The 8th of January, Spencer improved again the DS world record flying his Kinetic 100 at 487 mph, that is to say 783.75 km/h !!!! This is just crazy to achieve such speed with a sailplane. The 500 mph barrier is now very close and I bet that it will be broken sooner or later !
In the meantime, Chris Bosley set the new 60 inches DS wolrd record at 360 mph with a Dynamic D60.

Bad luck

Yesterday was the first date of the regional winter league in the Alps. The objective is to organize informal F3F contest to allow beginners to discover the category and give a try. Weather forecast was ok, but finally we got no wind at all when arriving on the slope. Few attemps to fly, with or without motor, but we returned home as the temperature was really freezing (about 0 °). Here are some pictures:

Awesome !

Just one question: Is the picture above my ex-Vampire ?
Ok ... let's compare:

Yes, this is my Halloween Vampire.

Except that the first picture is extracted from CRRCSIM, the slope simulator (Open Source).  Just for fun, there are people who like to program new model, including very complex color schemes ! Christian Barret is brillant at this exercice. I can imagine the time it take, for the configuration the rendering. Christian just released a new package containing 4 different Vampire color scheme we saw during the season on the french circuit. I just tried the Vampire on CRRCSIM, and this is bluffing !

You can visit the blog he opened recently: Generation lazer. On his blog you will find the package for the Vampire, the Ceres, and the Sniper EVO.

In preparation: FS4, AlliajHM.

E-Rotmilan build log

I started the assembly of the Electro Rotmilan. I also received the Kontronic Motor from RC-toy.de where it was still in stock. The motor is very nice and fit perfectly in the nose.
I notice that the inrunner has a kind of cooling fan in it, so I decided to drill some cooling slots. As the front of the fuselage is Kevlar, it was a bit painful to make them properly, but I succeeded finally by using some CA, then sand a bit.

Then I started the radio installation. I first drill the servo tray at the right dimension, that I doubled with 4mm ply wood. The size of the MKS DS6100 is just perfect for such application and fuselage dimensions. They are so tiny and powerfull at the same time. The elevator push rods are made from 4mm carbon tube ended by M2 Treaded aluminium couplers from MPJet.

The servos tray position in the fuslage make it a bit difficult to install and screw. Hopefully, onc the installation is done, you don't touch it anymore.
I don't know yet if I will use a separated receiver battery or not.
Regarding the radio layout, the receiver will be located just below the joiner. In front of the receiver will be the propulsion battery, then the controller/ESC.

I have not selected yet which ESC I will buy to go with the Kontronik. i need a 80/100 A ESC, and to be honest, I'm a bit afraid by the size of them. It's huge. Same for the battery as I need a 45C 3S battery of 2000mAh, but the constraint is that the thickness must not exceed 24 to 25 mm to enter in the fuselage.

I'm open to any advice on this topic !

2011 blog stats

In this beginning of January, I wanted to do a small post on the statistics of the blog.
I moved the website to a blog in 2009, start to update it more and more often in 2010, but 2011 is really the first year where I'm up to speed on this blog.
With 323 000 pages loaded and an average of 17300 visits per month, I can tell that Planet-Soaring reached a large audience.
I try to pay attention to the quality of the material I use on the blog to propose you only premium content: Pictures, videos, informations.
2011 has been also a turn for me as I really started to do more video editing. It takes lots of time but I think the expectation of the reader deserves it !
2012 will be a very busy year for me, but I hope I can continue to post and share with you slope soaring stuffs, and everything around.

Thanks for your loyalty and support.

Best wishes for 2012 !

2012 is here !