More Pictures of The Cesna 'Dragonfly'

GEMS PSS 2010 Event a major successes.

Paul Carnel’s winning entry with the Cesena ‘Dragonfly' does a close in fly-by on the Volksrust North slope.

The wind was howling on Saturday, so much in fact, it was very difficult to lift the bigger models into the wind and launch. In the video below, take note how the wings are bent downwards by the force of the wind until Norbert manages to get them up and flying just before the launch. Also note how the guys shirts are flapping in the wind!!

Evan  Launching Izak’s  Mig 7 for it’s Maiden flight.

Paul  receiving the winner’s trophy from Evan Shaw.

The 2010 GEMS PSS event over this weekend started on Saturday with excelent conditions for the entire day with a steady North westerly wind of +/- 30 kph and at times peaked as high as 40 kph. This proved to be Ideal conditions for Pauls ‘Dragonfly’ my Aero Commander and Norbit’s Jet. Sunday however, some low cloud set in and the wind changed direction to easterly. Despite this Norbet flew his 6 met SB10. Not exactly a PSS, but spectacular none the less!

There were not many slope gliders that didn't take to the air and everyone had a ball of a time. Thanks to a well run Event from the GEMS club. Here are just a few of the many pictures that we took over the weekend.

Evan Launching the Aero Commander

  Norbit’s Jet Fly By.

The War-birds squadron displaying how to do formation flying.

Paul’s "Splatfire" did not got shot down in a dogfight with some other war birds, it just promptly explode on a perfectly normal landing !

By Sunday the wind turned Easterly and most of the pilots had already stared the journey back, however we manage to take this group photo with the aid of 3 photographer’s  and if you're wandering  what Evan is doing on the ground take a look at the picture below.

I took my E-slope Mini Pulse with and it had no problem flying in the high wind conditions we had on Saturday, but unfortunately the way I mounted the wing proved to be the weak point, breaking away from the fuse on landing, (no major damage and it can be fixed in half-hour or so.) Flying out over the slope I never needed to run the motor as there was so much lift. However the one time I needed it was when I came to far back over the slope and go into some serious turbulence just behind the edge of the slope. I just open the motor for a burst and it shot forward back in to the smooth air within a few moments.

To all the Members of the GEMS club, thanks for a very relaxed and pleasant weekend.

Now to think of a PSS topic for next year’s event!.

Seems Izak was very upset the weekend came to an end!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (Actually the ravages of flying in very windy conditions and facing the setting sun on Volksrust west facing slope)

Berg Picture of the Year (2010)

(Click on the picture to open it in a new window and then click on the picture again to make it bigger)


This picture collage was compiled consisting of 11 pictures all taken of the last 11 months of postings from the BERG blog.


Thanks to all of you that have contributed to this year’s postings.

(pictures and articles)

 I hope that next year’s postings on the BERG blog will be as rewarding.

Fireworks at BERG Nats

And this is the result of Juanita's now famous "flaming exit" speed run. The model was rather far away and rather low on the last leg of her speed run and "landed" on the HT wires across the road from the B.E.R.G. field.


There was a big spark with the model disintigrating immediately and before we knew it, the dry grass was alight. To make matters worse, there was a bee hive situated in the burning long grass making firefighting a tad difficult.

Here is Juanita with the only parts of her model salvaged:
the towhook and canopy!

E-slope Mini Pulse successful maiden flight

About a year and 6 months ago I bought a Mini Pulse electric kit from a LHS. At the time these kits were hard to find but if you did found one on shelf in a hobby shop like I did you don’t even argue about the price and just buy it like I have done.


At the time the kit coast around R1250.00 and took about 2-3 evenings to assemble and install my radio gear. But here comes the catch, the Mini Pulse is tail dragger and if you want to ROG it, you will need a reasonable length of smooth run way to do so. The same argument also holds true for when you want to land it.

I was hoping to fly it at the Berg field but as you can see in the pictures the grass is not even enough to allow ROG. So the next thing it did was to hand launch the Mini Pulse only to find that on landing the undercarriage was ripped out and ending up with two neat holes punched into the wing were the wheel pads went in.

After repairing the damage the next thing was to find a field were one could ROG and land the Mini Pulse. So I ended up going all the way to the new GEMS field (in the mean time all forms of e-flight have been banded here as well) and at last I could take off and land from any direction. Now the only problem was to travel the distance but as keen modeler I did not mind doing the trip, however this set my mind into thinking mode and after speaking to Izak Theron (he also fly a Mini Pulse at GEMS) about the undercarriage problem and the possibility of removing it so that I can hand launch and land it on the BERG field, he pointed out to me that the next Items in line will be the under wing mount servos and then the fixed prop that will hit the ground on landing.

So Izak suggested that I mount the servos on top of the wing and ad a folding prop in order to save the prop and electric motor from damage on landing. After milling the Ideas around a bit I thought that I would rebuild the Mini Pulse from scratch with foam and a bagged wing construction including all modifications that we spoke about. The building took about four to five weeks and the Turninge 480 motor, speed control and lipo-battery were bought from Hobby King. The AUW came just under 1 Kg (without the undercarriage) and that is about 100 gram heavier than the normal Mine Pulse.

So as you can see I made the maiden flight yester day and it flew strait away the only difference that I could detect is slightly less vertical performance due to the extra weight. Landing now is now more a pleasure than a headache and as you can see after three landings on the Berg field I could hardly notice any damage on the underside of the Mini Pulse.

It would now also be possible to fly the Mini Pulse from the slope and you can be sure it won’t stay behind on my next trip to Vloksrust , and O yes if you are lucky enough to fly on tar runway you can always put the undercarriage back.

I would like thank Izak Theron for all the Ideas that made this really such a fun project and for Jogen that took all those stunning shots of the maiden flight.

Spectrem Air operates a much modified Basler DC3-TP67 for airborne mineral exploration based out of South Africa. The aircraft was converted at the end of 1992, and has been operating as a turbo-prop since 1993.  More photos here http://www.douglasdc3.com/safrica/safrica.htm