Cold weather foamie flying

[Don Sims]

We've been "snowed" in for a couple of days now. 2" of snow here in West Tennessee keeps my wife at home and my Valkyrie in the car port. Even though it's really cold for us, I just had to get some stick time in.

It was 18 degrees and I took the Reflex out for several flights. I'm using Irate 3 cell lipos in it and had a blast. The first flight, the hinge tape came off on one of the ailerons so I landed using the rudder and CA'd both sides down and had no other issues with tape.

The plane flies great, inverted slow flybys are simple to perform as are inside or outside loops. I've got power lines in my field so I was doing loops around the lines and flying inverted under them. Taking off and landing on Ice was also fun to do.

[Crashalott]

Heaya Don, i recon 18 is cold for your area allright.
I went out this morning to take the garbage out to the road and couldn't hardly breath.
It is 10 below zero but it seemed even colder.
There is no wind so far but i am not sure i want to fly yet.
Maybe later if the wind stays down.
Hope it warms up soon.

[darylm44]

We set a new club record last month - flying at -31 F.

When the temperature is below +10 lipos on the outside of a foamie can get cold even while discharging. Make sure you cut your flight times and stop at the first signs of lossing power so you don't damage them.

[Alpea42]

Dang , and we think it's cool flying in weather below 60. LOL Maybe this ice age is upon us.

[gfdengine204]

Wow.....this thread was dead for 3 years......might be a record.

[Don Sims]

Dang Crash, daryl, and Alpea thats some cold weather flying!! At -31 it's amazing that the lipos still work!

[Alpea42]

LOL Crash was the one that dug it up from the archive list

[Don Sims]

Sure blame it on Crash, seems like yesterday to me!!

[darylm44]

Actually the lipos didn't work at -31. The coldest I have been able to really fly electric was around -3. I did get two circles in with my 25 e Cub before the batteries faded.

Starting nitro engines was really hard also. Here is a picture of one of the guys using a propane torch to warm the head on a nitro motor.

[shotgunsmitty]

Yeah, I know what you mean, darylm44. The only time it gets that cold here is with the wind chill, and you can't fly in 70mph gusts...well, you can't fly my flatties or my glider...if you ever want to see them again, anyway.

I've used a torch to warm up the head on my log splitter! That's a cool picture there!

[Don Sims]

I guess in weather like that you guys do a lot of building!!

[darylm44]

Originally Posted by Don Sims

I guess in weather like that you guys do a lot of building!!

Actually we have close to a dozen hard core pilots who fly almost every Sunday year round. We have a club event at least once a month and can get up wards of 20 guys if it is above 15* - 20*. Most of the times our afternoon temps are in the teens or twenties above. If you dress right it's really not that bad. I use a transmitter glove with a couple of hand warmer packs to keep my hands and the transmitter battery warm.

[shotgunsmitty]

Cool! I never thought of that. We only have a handful of pilots here, unfortunately. But we still get together and talk building and flying. Seems we all have our different "specialites", one guy is a builder, one is good with radios, I'm kinda the techy guy that does all the math calculations...I'm making a trip to Anchorage in April, I would love to come down and see you guys fly!