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| Pulling the Skywalker X5 up into a stall to create a spin! |
Overall I was pretty happy with the testing for a couple of different reasons.
Initially I took the X5 up quite high and then started throttling back and giving her up elevator until she stalled. Most of the stalls were quite mild and I could hardly notice much more than a slight nose drop, I was happy with the results.
Next I tried a stall at a lower altitude as well as on a downwind leg, this is where things turned a little pear shape! Yep she stalled alright and she spun, quite hard, what made things worse was that it caught me by surprise, I panicked and instinctively pulled up on the elevators hoping to pull her out of the spiral dive ..... you can guess what happened next can't you, yep she spiralled all the way to the ground head first, POP!
When I went to investigate the damage I was pleasantly surprised, a very slight crinkle in the nose but that was it. I did a five minute check over everything and decided it was all ok and hand launched it back into wind, no worries she took off like a dream. The X5 is one tough mudder!
So, I had received my wake up call and luckily had been given and second chance. Undeterred I took the X5 but up to altitude and induced a series of full spins and recoveries, this time keeping my cool and using the correct spin recovery technique. I have the X5 with a forward CoG so the technique for me was simply let go of the controls, within one full spin rotation the X5 had built up enough airspeed and had broken herself out of the spin, all I had to do was pull up.
and the recovery was complete.
I continued with the spin recovery practice for a good ten minutes, entering the stall and then a spin and then recovering. Sometimes I even held the spin for a good three, four maybe five rotations (just to see how she would handle it) before starting the recovery procedure. I declared it a successful testing session and bought her in. I haven't built up the courage to try a low level spin again yet but I will try one again soon.
Next on my list for the flight testing is basic aerobatics, you never know I may need to call on my newly found spin recovery skills then.
