First flight - The Wild Card Project is Successful!

After 2,5 years of hard work (1240 hours) the Norwegian Wild Card has finally flown. The testflight was done from a short bunge at the top of the slope Spåkens which is a 3 hour drive from Tromsø. Wind and weather was not cooperating at all and I ended up flying in heavy rain without any wind. Therefore the testflight was very short (1.45min) Here follows a quick summary of the flight:

After waiting for a while we had a short stop in the rain and the bungee was brought out. I assembled the Wild Card and checked everything. I discovered that I had forgotten to bring tape to hold the wings and canopy on, but found a small piece of masking tape stuck to one of my wing bags, and used that to hold the canopy on. Due to the slope being a bit rocky, I decided not to handlaunch the model before attaching it to the bungee. I put in a bit of up trim and streched the bungee, knowing that this would be my only chance to get a test flight before going to Greenland. (Almost 2 month UAV campaign)

The release was done with a clean wing and after picking up some speed, the plane rotated and went almost vertical. The launch was straight and I managed to get an altitude of about 40-50m. Imidiately after releasing the tow line I removed the up trim, as none was needed. The angle between the wing and tailplane seemed correct. During the flight I circled both left and right and the rudder response seemed to be good. Especially the rudder worked well. (Not bad for a V-tail..) The model seemed to be very stable and showed no tendency to flick at low speed. Before landing I found myself in sink, trying to get to the landing area and flew the "pattern" low and slow with a nose high attitude, thinking that it should spin any moment, but it didn`t. The landing was uneventful and about two meters from myself. Elevator compensation was spot on. ( Thats a first for me.)

Considering that the wing was covered with water droplets, it performed great. Now I need some decent air to test the high speed characteristics, as this is after all a F3F model...

The flight was video taped, but I still need to figure out how to get the recording from the DV tape to my computer..

After the flight, my girlfriend and I celebrated with barbeque and Champagne.

I would also like to say thanks to all of you that have helped me getting this plane in the air. There is a lot of people that has helped, but I would especially like to say thank you to the following persons:

Annette Kåsa: My girlfriend who has had to endure countless hours of building, problemsolving and moneyspending during this project. She also helped me out during mould building.

Francois Lorrain: He helped me with the wing CAD and aerodynamics. He has also been a great motivator and friend that has helped to keep going when I`ve been stuck.

Bodo Landeck: He did the CAM and CNC milling of the wing positives, and spent countless hours on getting it all just the way I wanted it to be.
Dirk Pflug: Designer of the NWC airfoil set, which is especially designed for this airplane.
Espen Torp: V-tail positives and sharing a lot of great knowledge.

Paul Andre Johansen: My brother, who has helped me financially.

And many of the members on the forum RcGroups who has kept me motivated, you know who you are!

Now: Furter test flighting!