Indoor Flying at Go-Karting Track
Posted on November 15, 2008 by aaronredbaron
Tumwater, Washington- I had the unique opportunity to fly inside a fantastic building set up for Go-Karting. The Apex Karting Indoor Go-Karting track is extremely well laid out with a huge interior of approximately 300ft by 100 ft with 24 foot ceilings. With no poles to worry about, I had no obstacles other than the ceiling height to contend with and I was able to fly as aggressively as I wanted in the huge free standing structure. Apex Karting is new to the Olympia Washington area and was kind enough to allow Skyview AP owner Brandon Price and myself use the facility for a flying demo. Although the intended audience for our demo canceled at the last minute, Apex CEO Walker Armstrong still graciously allowed to let me get a few flights in anyway.
After flying indoors, Brandon and I went flying in Lacey. The weather was awesome, considering we are in the usually rainy Northwest, this rare calm, warm, and cloudless day could easily be considered perfect! I flew a few more flights with the Mini Titan SE and the Protos 500 again, and Brandon let me play around with some of his new stuff. Brandon flies a lot of Parkzone ready to fly models because they are easy to keep working with parts availability and all the new models fly pretty well. I enjoyed fooling around with their T-28, which is docile but capable of mild aerobatics, and the Apprentice trainer, which is very docile but also a flies nicely inverted. I found the T-28 needed to have some power all the way to the ground to make a nice approach, which is normal for planes with lots of drag. The Apprentice was very tame, but I was a surprised it didn’t have a little more dihedral in the wing to make it more self correcting. The airplane has great stall characteristics, and it is very tame, but the relatively flat wing does not level automatically when you release the aileron, so proper counter control must be used to level the wings after turns. I would recommend beginners get a little help with the Apprentice; either get on a buddy box, or use a simulator enough to get a feel of what to expect.
