Page 14 - Demo

After literally years of procrastination I finally ran o u t o f e x c u s e s t o postpone the maiden flight of my Seagull Models The Maiden FlightDavid ReadWestland Lysander. Powered (nearly) by an OS Gemini 300 twin 50cc 4st featuring onboard glow, guided by Futaba with Hitec servos.You've seen those YouTube videos of first flights that are completely uneventful save for a few clicks of trim?? Well, my first Lysander flight was definitely not like that!!After convincing my OS twin to run on both cylinders, I sent it off down the strip whereupon the model lurched and rolled to the right as soon as airborne. After correcting that heart stopping manoeuvre I quickly found that a lot of up trim was needed and Casey my trusty assistant had to drive the trims while I fought to keep the model under some sort of control to gain height despite the somewhat sluggish performance.It became very evident that \produce some sort of weird knife edge flight that highlighted the adverse yaw coupling and did precious little turning. Rudder and lots of it were required to actually steer this beast. After a few circuits careening around the sky in a barely controlled manner I decided that discretion would be the better part of valour and I should return this model to mother earth forthwith. I throttled down and in a rash moment of stupidity I dropped the flaps on base for landing. This resulted in an impressive and immediate altitude gain, better indeed than earlier with my poor donk screaming its heads off! Needless to say that this landing was a no-go, I then concentrated on losing the excess height. At the extreme opposite end of the strip with little height and low air speed one of the cylinders decided that this would be a good place to quit, just as I committed to a downwind turn - BUGGER! All out of options and with a sick engine I had to put it down in the rough - narrowly missing a stock fence. Not the most graceful landing but you know what they say about any landing you can walk away from...The butchers bill was light today, just a bent UC leg.Better luck next weekend.The 78th National Aeromodelling ChampionshipsHawkes Bay January 4th - 8th 2026Free FlightControl line Vintage SoaringScaleAerobaticsPylonHeli Fun Fly1378th Model Flying New ZealandNATIONALSHawkes BayJan. 4th - 8th2026NATIONALS MANAGERSKevin Botherway %u201cRowdy%u201d 027 557 0470CompMan@mfnz.org Frazer Briggs %u201cBogan%u201d 021 288 9455CNIRep@mfnz.org ALL ENQUIRIES WELCOME