Winter Flight of the Skydrill - New Video

Geez Troy.. that must have made you feel good! It felt good to watch the vid! Nice job on the engine build. It runs good and strong! Did you swap-in one of the little bottle clunk-tanks like what Brad uses? I know that you were interested in those. Regardless... the airplane fly's pretty well in the wind! Congrats. on a nice Winter-flight.. and thanks for sharing!!!

Thanks guys! The engine build was straight forward. Just slapped together the parts as purchased and did a few bits of rich break-in, allowing it to cool between runs. She runs nice, eh?! The tank is a 1oz Sullivan with a custom clunk line that installed in 2008 when the plane was originally built. Still works great and clunks for aerobatic flight. The covering is pretty bad and is delaminating in places. I just applied some clear covering over the worst areas to stretch a little more life out of it. Flying Cox engines is very satisfying when they run right and the Skydrill is a very nice tracking ship. Good combo! I need to clean everything up, oil some engines, and get back to building now.

Great flight, Troy .........

Hearing the name Skydrill and seeing it fly sure brings back a lot of memories. Thanks for posting the video.

andrew

Skydrill Is a good name and it stands up to it with that Killer engine screaming on the front !! Good flight Troy !!

Thanks guys! I used to fly this model with a Skyline FX .049 assembled by Tim Wiltse until it finally wore out the piston/sleeve fit. At the time, it was the hardest running reedie I had seen, before Cox Int existed. I then ran some Black Widows and a stock Surestart on it but they were not near as strong or fast enough to let the plane shine in the air. Since the old-school engine builders like Wiltse and Valentine are no longer bringing high performance reedies to the market, it's nice to know that anyone can still set up a good strong runner from Cox Int parts or EX Model Engines parts. Now that I see how well the combo runs, I need to buy a couple more of those KB backplates, HD cranks, And TD cylinder sets for future use. Looks to be about the same engine as the Black Lynx that EX markets.

I sent Steve Adams a link to the vid as well. Hope it helps him sell a few more kits. The Skydrill is one of the best flying 1/2A sport planes ever kitted, IMHO.