Flew my little friend's Kitty Cat plane today

Had a whole passel of neighbor kids begging for more.

Painted with metal flake color changing blue/green/purple paint, and a Monokote tail. It has whiskers too, but they're not visible in the picture.

I flew it the first time just to see if the thing would really fly. It was really tough to launch until someone who could follow instructions finally showed up. I put it through its paces and did a couple of loops, and the silly thing actually flies pretty well.

So I got my little friend to stand in the circle with me and tried passing off the handle to her after it got going steady. We tried a couple of times to share the handle without success, but I ended up finishing the flight a couple of times. Finally she had a grip on it and it was in the middle of a flat lap and I let her have it. Or that was the plan. But we stood there in center circle and watched it fly away, across the street, climbing, headed over my house when it chopped the tips off some maple branches and hung the lines and dove into the grass in my front yard.

Somewhere along the way it ate its tail off, but other than a broken prop it was good as new. She and I agreed we should try another day when there wasn't so much confusion, trying to heard all the neighbor kids and all. Besides, I think she kind of wanted to go swimming anyway. First good pool day too.
I had the camera out, but never turned on the thing. I'll have to remember to assign that job to someone else. But we all had fun. And they were clamoring to see the Baby Streak fly too, so I hooked it up, pumped the bladder lipping full and flew a couple of long exhibition flights. I was tired and to me, my flying was ugly, but I don't think they could tell. The field was weedy so I couldn't buy a good landing to save my life. I Almost greased a perfect one, but a dandelion patch flipped it right before it stopped. No crashes though. Good fun and a bunch of kids came into my shop and pointed out the planes they wanted to fly. My Refried bean was the most popular. The Fire plane, they called it(see my avatar). I had to spin it around on its hanger and show them the shattered wing though.

I'm happy with how the Kitty Cat flew. Dang Cub Scouts used to build them in two meetings. It took me six weeks. I think I'll add some nose weight next time to make the launches easier. It wants to flip over backwards on every launch right now. We can remove the weight when she gets the hang of it.

So that's the story of the Kitty Cat. Next project up, the T-28/MP Jet .061. That should be a quicker job, and after that comes the Yak-9 build.