scott.projectsomewhere

Finally the day arrives to launch the new Moth, and it just so happens to be blowing 20 to 30 knots from the South. Perfect conditions for the maiden flight.

I spent 80% of the day doing the final 20% of the assembly, then had the fun of pulling it all out and starting again when I’d put the rear wing bar on the wrong way. There’s a trick for new players.

Anyway. I ended up ditching John who was still tooling away on his new Bladerider, and ventured out for a sail. Given the conditions, I set up with -1 degrees and had the odd sensation of flying fast and level, but so far bow down that I looked like I was about to pitchpole. The flap controls all worked well, but I ran out of rudder travel trying to counteract the bow down attitude. Canting the board back to 0 and it felt a bit better.

All the lines bedded in, and the tramps and straps started to go a bit sloppy, so I turned and headed back to shore.

So the day was a success. No catastrophic failures. A whole bunch of capsizes, but no repairs. I’ve got a long list of work to do on the boat from here, but for day zero, it felt great.

By the time I returned, John had finished putting his shiny red boat together, but thought it best not to sail in the breeze which seemed to be building. Probably a good idea. Hopefully the weather is a bit more forgiving tomorrow.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 1st, 2008 at 5:24 pm and is filed under Moth, Sailing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.