Hello Mark!
A couple of months ago, someone was talking about posting GIFs of our
models for FREQ, and I was chatting the virtues of slope flying with
someone who couldn't see the logic in tossing a perfectly good
unpowered plane over a cliff.
Well, I've completed scanning and formatting nine pictures of my
DCU Stryker, painted as Blue Angel #6.
They are available for Freq from here at 218/704 under the filenames
STRYKER1.GIF through STRYKER8.GIF.
A bonus shot is STK_FOUR.GIF, which is a shot of four nearly identical
Blue Angel Strykers doing a flyby in the classic diamond formation.
Yes, we "traded paint" frequently doing this type of flying.
The diamond was almost an accident, and we were lucky to have a camera
on the hill when we did it.  It was rare that the four of us would
all bring our Strykers on the same day.
We barely got this picture before the "slot" plane passed the front
three.
Most of our formation practice was actually in the form of friendly tag...
a hardware-friendly form of combat where you attempt to only tap another
plane with yours.  A few times, my Stryker was tapped from below, and
GENTLY pushed up into a stall.  Thank God for a 300 foot cliff for
plenty of recovery room!
It's not the easiest plane to fly, but the Stryker is definitely my
favorite sloper.  It's bad points are that it stalls easily due to
the highly tapered and swept wing... tip stalls are NASTY, and at
very low speeds and/or high AOA, the wide fuselage and LEX blanket
the vertical fins, so it really looses lateral stability.
Still, at high speed it sounds great with the air howling in the open
tail of the glass fuselage.  On really good days, it's a dream to
fly (days when a floater would be lost!).
C-ya! Rich
--- GoldED 2.40
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