Hello, Phlat Family! This past weekend, my club, Riverside Aero Modelers, (http://www.riversiderc.com/) Hosted the Randy Covington Electric Fly-in.

This event is always allot of fun, and brings out models ranging in size from the popular Parkzone Vapors, Embers, ETC. to giant scale 3d and warbirds. This year, however marked a first for the fly-in, as well as myself, and Lucky.

First, I hauled my planes in the trailer...Man, I tell you, after years of deciding what I could fit in the limited space of the vehicles I have owned, it was nice to just load up the trailer and go...no worries about which model gets left behind!! The only ones that stayed home were the gassers and the ones that weren't ready to fly.

But enough about me...the real first was the debut of Guru Aviation! Chris (Lucky) and I had discussed for a long time cutting a few foamies and offering them up for sale, and this past weekend was our first official outing. We debuted the Guru 364.5, a larger parkjet that actually is a 3d machine! After a few design revisions, we finally had something we were happy with, and figured an electric event would be perfect to show it off a little. We didn't expect to get the kind of reaction we did, heck, we would have been happy if only one person had expressed an interest in the 364.5, much less wanted to buy one. However, in the end, 6 people are proud new owners of the 364.5.

The reaction was outstanding. When we tossed them in the air for the first flights, we could hear people behind us saying things like "A parkjet shouldn't do that!" "Wow..did you see that thing hover? Its a pusher!! I didn't know you could hover a pusher!" Before the end of the first flight, we had a guy walk up to our flight station, asking all kinds of questions about the jet, and then he asked the one we really wanted to hear..."Do you guys have any for sale?" We were blown away..we didn't expect anyone to ask that, especially since we hadn't set up to sell anything. I mean...we had the Guru Aviation sign I had cut on the PP out in front of my canopy, and the side of my trailer has the decals, but no signs announcing kits for sale or anything! Chris and I hadn't really discussed a price!

Anyway, we talked to the gentleman for a bit, and told him we hadn't set a price yet, and he suggested we have a board meeting, and he would check back with us. After we talked it over, we decided that since all we had was foam..no spars, no instructions, no control horns, no nothing, we figured $15.00 was a fair price to get a few out there and hopefully get some feedback on them. Now I wonder if we set the price to low, cause nobody hesitated when we told them how much. They just opened their wallets and and paid with a smile...

We explained the wide range for the CG, what equipment we were using, and all the other details, and watched in amazement as our first customer walked away happy! It didn't take long after that for word to get around, and soon the first four kits I had brought were gone. I had to run home Saturday night and cut some more, but I am not complaining. RAMS is 5 miles from my house, and I had planned to come home to get a shower anyway, before heading back out to night fly, and camp...(Yea, that's right, My warm bed was 5 miles away, and I chose to camp at the field. It's a tradition for me. there are some very close 2 day event's that I just have to camp at. The night flying fun, as well as the camaraderie is worth it...and I enjoy sleeping out under the stars..)


Chris and I had a great day, flying the 364.5, as well as outr new DW Foamies 48" BAF Extra's. Chris got the 330, and I got the 300, and man, can Mike design an airplane! I just hope I can do something half as good as he has at this size. (This was also our first time wringing the DW kits out as well. Chris has a great paint job on his...mine, well, mine has no paint, but some killer vinyl!)

I also got flights on the surfer, much to the amazement of the crowd...I think a few of them were really surprised to look up and see it in the air, judging from all the "What in the world is that?!" comments I heard during it's first flight of the day. I am still flying the kit Mark cut me, and I have worked out the turning issue I had with it. I need to cut the version with a rudder, as soon as I go get another bundle of foam...

I will have to admit, I didn't take many pictures, but Chris's brother-in-law made the trip down, and was dubbed our "marketing guy." I will post a few that I have shamelessly lifted from RCG (with proper credit, of course) and I am sure Lucky will jump in and post some more.

Brandy and Eli came for a while, and Eli had a ball running around looking at airplanes, as well as joining me at the flightline. That kid has it almost as bad as I do... :mrgreen:

Anyway, we had a great weekend, and just wanted to share it with our Phlat Family. If you are ever in the area, please let me know if you want to check out the field, and if you happen to be around close to the beginning of September, come on out the the Electric fly...I can promise you you will have a blast!

Tim
AG4RZ Attached files

 

Here is a video of the Guru 364.5 in action...

http://www.motionbox.com/videos/7a99ddb0191ce4c3f5/

 

Great write brother Tim!!

As Tim said where just blown away how it went and we are just excited how the jet came out. It is awesome!! Ok enough talking here comes the pics!!! I got video of the jet which we will post as soon as we upload it.

Chris Attached files

 

Thanks, Shaun! Funny you mention the speedy..I was looking at it last night thinking it might make a good home for my MicroDan 2505 Speed motor...that motor is a little to much for the 364.5!

The sign took some work, I tell ya...I imported the JPG file that Chris had sent me of our logo, and spent some time figuring out how to get it to look the way I wanted... I am pleased with how it came out. Now if I can just figure out how to imbed the motionbox video of the jet, I will be happy!

Tim
AG4RZ

 

more pics...

Attached files

 

Thanks shaun, can't wait to see your F-22. I love how this thing does flat turns and waterfalls!

Chris

 

The name..well....would you believe it took us 364.5 tries to get it right? I didn't think so...

Chris's brother in law coined the name. I don't know the full story behind it, but when Chris called me and said "I have the name, man," and told me what it was, I said, heck ya,we can use it!

The B-I-L also helped with flight testing, even though he has just started flying..He had some good input that helped us nail this thing down.

Oh..the best part is that this thing can easily be flown in a gym!! We will have some video after our indoor on Friday...pretty amazing for a 41 inch long jet!!

Tim
AG4RZ

 

That is awesome guys, congrats on the first outing of Guru Aviation (nice name). It looks like you had a blast. The expression on Lucky's face waiting for batteries is hilarious.

Have you guys thought about getting a small generator and running the phlatprinter out of the trailer?

 

Well lets see if I can explain it. First we want to be different, it was my brother-inlaw that really gave the idea. Its kinda his saying, you ask him how much something is or how far..he would all ways say 364 1/2 oh yea! Kinda have to know him but it is funny. So in the spirit of keeping it family like, we choose it. Its different, plus he did helps us out with one of the revisions for the jet.

Chris

 

Thanks!!

I seen that pic and had to laugh at myself, I said dern is that what I look like when I can't fly

It would be nice to get generator

Chris

 

Hey Tim..I actually have a 6KW genset I could haul if I needed to. I am debating about doing something like that at a fly-in...mainly because I don't know if we wanna go just be a vendor, and not get as much flying time.

Of course, after we have a few designs under our belt, that might not be a bad thing to do at some of the local events, As long as I can still sleep in the trailer, and not give up any airplane hauling room, it would be kinda neat to cut some planes at the field!

Tim
AG4RZ

 

Shaun, the way I do it is use a quality UPS. Plug the computer into the UPS, and the UPS into the generator. Just make sure you are using a relatively new generator that is actually putting out 115-120 volts, so the all the UPS has to do is smooth any differences in frequency and occasionally deal with a small voltage drop.

Now...of course you understand this is only my personal experience, and I cannot promise it will work for you. I do monitor line voltage as well as generator frequency while I am running off the generator..

Tim
AG4RZ

 

6KW is way over-kill. There are these inverters that you can buy very inexpensive. a 1.5KW will do just fine. It's more than enough. Get yourself two 6V batteries from golf-carts and you'll have hours of use out of it before you'll have to recharger the batteries. I live in the Dominican Republic. Part of life here is the power outages. I have a 3.5KW inverter for my house with four batteries. It will run 8Hr before it will cut out. I run my computer off it with no UPS.

An other advantage to the inverter is that you can hook up a regular fluorescent light in your trailer for plenty of light.

 

Yoram...Maybe I should mention the battery bank in the trailer....I have 600 amp/hours worth of deep cycle batteries in the trailer, and a medical grade 1.5KW inverter out of an ambulance already mounted in there. Regardless of load, the frequency stays between 59 and 61 Hertz, and is so close to a pure sine wave it isn't even funny. The voltage runs between 115 and 120VAC, again, depending on the load... Power isn't to much of a problem..I fly ALLOT of electrics, and wanted to be sure I had plenty available for charging batteries and running power tools, soldering irons, glue guns, coffee makers, the stereo system, a DVD player and TV for Eli etc for field conveniences, as well as for times when I use the trailer for amateur radio operations

Tim (lifelong nerd)
AG4RZ

 

I missed a mention of the battery bank earlier. Your trailer just got even more awesome

 

That is great! Very cool setup for a life long nerd!

 

WOW, really nice job you guys!!! I love your 364.5 !! Very nice flying characteristics!!!


John