Here we have the Viper Jet. It was in the process of being reinforced, fixed, and readied for flight when this picture was taken. It was purchased from the same hobby site where Jay found the MiG-15. This jet is really gorgeous in person. It has a metallic finish to it that sparkles in the light.

I took a vacation day on Friday so that I could spend it with Jay. So after his nap, and visiting with his grandma, we loaded up the Viper Jet and headed to the flying field for the maiden flight. We had no idea how it was going to look, or sound, so we crossed our fingers and let it whirl.

As the peanut gallery (with me being the head nut 😉 ) looked on, Jay did some last minute checks and then throttled it up…

And off she flew! It looked beautiful in the air and seemed to handle nicely. He had very little trimming to do on it.

It uses the same fan as the MiG-15, but because of the different engineering on the intake tubes the sound is different. The MiG has the most beautiful sound that I’ve ever heard on a jet. Despite the fact that it’s electric, you would almost swear that it was a turbine jet. The Viper Jet doesn’t have the same sound, but it’s not as ‘electric’ sounding as Jay’s other jets. If that makes sense. And Jay might completely disagree with me, but since this is my blog what I say, goes.

He did some low passes, a few loop-da-loops, some speed climbing, and lots of other types of jet flying. He doesn’t know it, but the next series of moves he has to learn on this jet is that after he’s done a cuban 8 he will have to snap immediately into a knife edge, and then climb out of that and into a pop top. As soon as he has accomplished this with the Viper Jet he will really be ready for the big time. 🙂

After about four and a half minutes it was time to bring it down and check out how things looked. We threw down the gear, gave a collective sigh that it actually came down, and then approached the landing strip.

The beautiful touch down was greeted with a round of applause and somebody (I won’t say who… *cough*Budweiser Bill *cough*) yelling, “That looked great, Sweetie!” Everything was in one piece and the batteries weren’t even warm. It did a great job so now Jay feels comfortable making a decent pair of struts for it so that he doesn’t have to worry about the landing gear bending when he lands.

In other plane news, we have a new plane being assembled. This one has been in the basement in its box for a little while, so it was time for it to see the light of day. This is the fuselage for a T-6. That’s all that I can remember of the name. I could make something else up, if you want me to. Let’s see… This is a T-6 Texan that will fly the pants off of you as if a twister had yanked them off! Wear a clean pair of drawers for this one, my friends! 😉

Here are the rest of the T-6’s parts. Let’s see… I spy with my little eye…. a wing! And a cowel (however it’s spelled)… at least I think that’s what it is. This is what it looks like when you get a model plane in a box. If I was a snot I would get into a few of the other boxes sitting around down there and shuffle parts around. Wouldn’t Jay be confused when he tried to figure out why the company packed Piper Cub parts in with the T-6 stuff! lol

I have one more bit of airplane-related news to share. No, it has nothing to do with this picture of Jay. I just wanted to have something nice to look at while I told you the other news. My AMA license arrived! I’m now official! Woo-hoo! Jay claims that I’m doing really good learning how to fly. I believe that’s because I have the best instructor. I’ve had around 70 minutes of flying time in total so far; 15 minutes on the LT-25 in May, 20 minutes on Sam’s Radian last weekend, and then around 35 minutes on the LT-25 Friday night. We have a flight simulator on order so that when Jay is napping I can be practicing my flying skills without worrying about demolishing hundreds of dollars. Friday night he was getting a little smart with me, causing the plane to do silly stuff in the air while I was buddy boxed to him and trying to fly. Sam was there and made a comment about it. As I told Sam, “It’s okay. If he wants to be a snot, then so be it. I’ll just let the sticks go and if it crashes he’s the one who will have to fix it!” lol I’m not a dummy. 😉