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From the title, you must be asking yourself what exactly is a slope junkie. You will have your answer by the end of this story.

It all started at about 5am. We were going FLYING! I didn’t sleep much the night before because of the usual pre-trip excitement, but it didn’t matter much now, it was time to load up the truck. I met my flying buddy Chris at his house which about 100 yards from my place (it’s awesome having a fellow R/C nut living that close to you) and we started loading up his Toyota truck. I was followed by Max, Bruce, and another local pilot. We filled the back of the truck and headed out. The destination was about an hour away, near Tullahoma, TN at Normandy Dam. We were cramped with 5 guys in the truck, but the conversation was fun with wise cracks rolling and talk of who will or won’t crash during the day. I couldn’t wait to fly.

For those of who don’t know me, you should know that I started in this hobby flying gliders. I lived in the mountains of NC and we had some amazing places to fly. I flew gliders for 3 years before I touched a powered plane. Flying sailplanes is to this day, my favorite thing to do in this hobby. I can’t really explain it, but there is just nothing like being up on a mountain with picture perfect panorama views, the wind in your face, and a silent flying machine cutting through the air. If you’ve never tried it, you owe it to yourself to get to a slope sight and check it out. It will change your R/C life.

Anyway, when we arrived the sun was up and the wind was blowing. It was a little chilly, but we didn’t care one bit. We immediately raced to get our planes together and see who would be first in the air. I don’t remember who won, but we were all up pretty quickly. We had an arsenal of aircraft to play with. EPP foamies, composite (or crunchies) ships, flying wings, aerobats, we had it all. The air was pretty good to us providing good lift and later in the day, we had some great thermals blow through to gain some serious altitude. I brought out my favorite Hobby Lobby sailplanes, the Samurai, and attached a FlyCamOne HD to it for some video. I’ll share the video at the end of this story, but we got some great footage.

We had many people stop by the side of the road to see what was going on here. We would all showboat a little bit doing low level aerobatics and pushing the limits. Everybody loves an audience. I heard the usual “how high can it go?” type questions and we were happy to talk to interested folks about our fine sport. As the day flew past (pun intended) we began winding down with only a few noteworthy crashes and plenty of stall turns and aerobatics to remember. We starting packing back up and heading for home. Now here is where the “junkie” part comes into play. Instead of just heading home and grabbing some dinner, Max pipes up and says “hey, I was looking at Google Earth and I think a found a new slope we can try just down the road.” Next thing you know, we were winding up one of the small mountain ranges off 24E towards Chattanooga.

We came to a plot of land that was for sale with an awesome view and joked about how we should buy the lot and turn it into a dedicated slope site. It was tight though, trees all around, not much space to make a landing. Taking off is the easy part, but Chris was like “I’ll just stall and spin it straight down.” I had to see that, so Chris got his plane together and became our new slope test pilot. If the lift wasn’t there, it was going to be nearly impossible to retrieve the plane. Luckily, right after launch, the tail went up like a rocket and we knew we had a cool spot. Everyone else grabbed a glider and joined him. Max, used his crunchy composite glider and we all wondered how he was going to get that one down. Everyone else was using combat tested EPP planes that bounce. I took the Samurai up for some more video and had an interesting landing which you’ll see later. Chris came in first and did his stall, snap, spin to the ground. It worked great! It wasn’t so easy for me and the Samurai though with it being made of wood and carbon fiber. I had to approach downwind, fly straight at myself, and then whip it 180 degrees and try to land. After two or three attempts, I got it, but the wing hit some bushes and spun it around with no damage. I was safe! Max on the other hand with his big heavy crunchy plane tried coming in from behind with full crow mix to keep it slow. He got it down, but one of his wings caught on some bushes and you’ll have to watch the video to see how that one ended.

So by now, you should understand why we call ourselves “Slope Junkies.” We’re insane for flying gliders on hills using crazy wind energy generated by the sun to soar aloft for hours on end. It was an amazing day of flying, friends, and fun. The only question left to ask is, when can we do it again!?

Jason Cole
Member of S.A. (Slopers Anonymous)

Enjoy the video.

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This article is more about drop kicking a specific helicopter, the Durable Micro Heli . You wouldn’t want to drop to kick a .90 size glow engine heli unless you wanted a trip to the hospital. With that in mind and borrowing from one of my favorite TV shows, Myth Busters, let me say this, do not attempt this at home, I’m what you call an “expert”.

I know there is a burning question in your mind after reading that first paragraph. Why on earth would he want to drop kick a helicopter? Well the answer is pretty simple. It’s called the Durable Micro Heli, and I wanted to see if it could live up to its name. Of course I was skeptical, when I got into flying electric powered helicopters the Ikarus Piccolo was THE helicopter to have. It was fantastic, we could actually fly indoors. The downside though, was that if you even thought about running into a wall or ceiling fan, or thick air, something was going to break. Calling a helicopter durable is like calling Dolly Parton slim…

So that leads me back to drop kicking this helicopter and the fundamentals of doing so. The first thing you want to do before participating in any physical activity like drop kicking is stretch. Limber up those arms, legs, and torso. Cardio is key, you don’t want to look like an idiot and cramp up after you’ve just drop kicked a helicopter right? Ok, now that you’re good and warmed up, you’ll want to visualize the kick in your head. Think about the rotors spinning and in slow motion, imagine yourself flying through the air Chuck Norris style, leg extended, and knocking that heli right out of the air. In real life it will be nothing like that, so now you know what not to expect.

On to the real deal. For my drop kick, I held the heli by the tail, made my best soccer pose, released and kicked it sky high. I expected parts to go flying everywhere, but it landed in one piece. I could not believe my eyes, if that would have been a Piccolo, there wouldn’t have been a piece left the size of a dime. I was truly stunned. This thing really is durable, and not only that, but it was able to fly around afterward like nothing happened.

Now, do I recommend that you actually go out and drop kick this helicopter? Absolutely not. Don’t blame me if you do and break something, we didn’t say indestructible, just durable. Will drop kicking this helicopter and still flying it put a huge smile on your face. You bet it will. Alright, it’s time for me to stretch some more. Go fly something, have some fun and remember, cardio is key.

Jason Cole

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I recently went to fly a couple planes at a new field I had heard about. I arrived at what appeared to be a large hangar with a gravel runway and an “Official AMA Airfield” sign. I was the only one there so I enjoyed flying a couple batteries through my Extra 300. As I was packing up to leave a man arrived and began opening the hangar doors. To my amazement there were 2 tow planes and about 6 free flight gliders, all of which appeared to be fully operational. I went to help open the hangar doors and the man offered me a ride in the ASK-21 if I would help him and the instructor for the day. I gladly accepted his offer and after a few hours of moving planes around I got to go up in the ASK-21.

We got a tow to about 2000 feet and headed straight for the nearest thermal. It was easy to tell when we hit it because the plane would quickly jump in elevation, also you can watch the altimeter as it shows you how many feet per minute you are rising. At one point we were able to maintain a 600 feet per minute ascent! After telling me the basic controls the instructor let me fly the plane around for about 10 minutes. I was able to fly into different thermals and gain altitude on my own (or at least attempt to). Eventually the pilot took back the controls and asked if I was ready for a wingover, I said sure and he went into a mild dive then pulled back on the elevator with a slight mix of left aileron. The plane did a nice 4G wingover and I have to say it was a pretty intense amount of force! Next the pilot did what he calls a “Zoomie”, we hit about 110 knots flying low at about 500 feet over the private runway! Needless to say this was one of favorite flying experiences of all time! To see some of the R/C sailplanes and gliders that Hobby Lobby sales click here.

-T.J. Moore

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Surely you’ve seen them by now, Tricopters, Quad Rotors, Hexacopters, there has been an amazing increase in the amount of R/C multi-rotor aircraft this year. I believe the increase is due in part by the popularity of the Parrot A.R. Drone. The A.R. Drone is controlled by any iOS device and sends a real time video feed over wifi back to the device. It’s seriously cool, but I’m learning there is so much more these things can do.

GPS, way-point navigation, 3-axis gyros, on-board computers, what does it all mean? In short, it means these radio controlled aircraft are super stable, precise, and can be programmed to do nearly anything. Plot out some way-points on a map and your drone can take off, maintain a set altitude and fly to those points. Once you start doing some research, you’ll be amazed at what these drones are capable of. I’ve even seen some sensors that the drone can track and follow at a set distance. Imagine the military and law enforcement uses for that! Place the sensor under a suspects car and when they leave, the drone can track and video the whole thing. They can fly at speeds up to 70+ MPH, so no worries about loosing the bad guys.

That all sounds pretty great, but I’m thinking more selfishly. What can I do with a drone like this? Well for starters, FPV or First Person Video is a great new way to fly. Slap on your set of video goggles, and your now looking at the view from inside the drone. Take off, fly around and explore the world from the air without ever leaving the ground. Combine that with a pan/tilt stabilized camera mount and you can shoot some great HD video footage. I can totally see movie directors using these to get shots that their boom mounts just can’t reach and it’s a whole lot less expensive than renting a helicopter. For me, I would love to go to the airport with my powered paraglider and use the sensor. I would launch the drone and tell it to go to about 50ft and hold altitude, then take off in the paraglider. The drone would follow me filming all the while and maintain its pre-programmed distance. I’d have my very own chase cam in the air. What would you do with a drone? I’d love to hear your thoughts, so leave a comment and let us know.

Check out this article to see what the FAA thinks about all this:
FAA looks into News Corps Daily Drone

Thanks,
Jason Cole

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