Good news, or Bad news first?

Fine, I'll start with the good news :-)

I took my Lakers plane over to the field to meet Andy on Sunday. He was there, along with Al, Fred and a few others. Enjoyed watching a few guys fly early in the day, before the wind picked up.

Andy had another student there as well, a Junior High School aged boy and his father. He decided to fly with this student first, since his plane was ready to go and had been up several times before. While he was up, he asked Al to come check out my plane and give it a test flight.

Al was checking controls and noticed something odd... Right Rudder, turned the steering wheel left... Left rudder, turned the steering wheel right... uh-oh! Plus, there wasn't enough throw on the ailerons, or the elevator. So, a minute or so later the plane was apart, the tool drawer was next to us, and Al and I spent an hour fiddling inside the plane. Special thanks to Joe for helping bored out the wing wood around the Aileron arms so they'd have more room to move.

Eventually we decided there was too much work to be done at the field; and since Al had nothing going on, he invited me and my Laker's plane back to his shop to complete the work.

We moved servo's around, replaced brace wood, and control rods, drilled a new hole in the fire wall and moved the steering arm to the other side so it would properly move when the rudder moved.

So, appx 4 hours (total) later I was back in the car heading home, Al's business card in my pocket, and a with a plane that was "approved" by Al for flight :-) I'm going to meet him some time this week to get a test flight in.

Now, for the bad news. The FCC outlawed Wide-band radios years ago; because frequency 42 took up 41,42 and 43! Everyone that flys these days uses either a narrow band radio, or a 2.4 Ghz radio (like your portable/cell phone). So, to fly at the club (legally anywhere, really), I need a new radio :-(

I've been looking, and I think this one is the one I'm going to go with, the Airtronics RDS8000, a 2.4 Ghz model.  It comes with 2 Receivers, so I can run two planes off of it right off the bat, with programming for up to 10!  It also has a bunch of simple built in features, like a timer as part of the radio.  Innovation.. who knew!  There are many other things, that sport and semi-pro flyers enjoy in a radio, which I will likely never need.

So I'm going to call the hobby shop today and see if they carry it, and go pick it up if they do.  If not, I'm going to order online and hopefully use it this weekend.  

Ill post pics of the changes to the servo configuration, and the radio as I get them :-)