48" Yak EXP Video Showcase__Hell Yeah!

It's been a very Yak kind of year for me. Lately the new 60" Yak EXP has gotten the bulk of my attention/affection, but the 48" have taken a good shakedown too this year. Most of the first half of the year I was tormenting my 48" beata (beater) Yak, hoping to kill it so I would have an excuse to build a new one. This plane has now had a motorbox replacement, two canopies, two rudders and three landing gear legs, plus a set of wheel pants and a pair of wheels.

I keep wrecking it in ways that leaves it easy to repair. Just buy the replacement parts, replace and fly.

I damaged the plane early on and after that I just didn't care about it as much. Of course, it's still money, so I had to fix it (repeatedly, that is) and keep flying it. After awhile, I just became bonded with it and it flies so well that when I do kill it I will regret  not treating it any better!

Yak EXP Hell Yeah from Doc Austin on Vimeo.

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Wood airplanes seem to be too stiff when you first build them. The wood has to flex and the hinges need to loosen up, and it takes a little time for an airplane to really come good. The best flying planes I own have got a few miles on them, and that's why in a lot of ways it hurts more to wreck an old beater than a brand new one.

The 48" Yak is a bit different from the other EXPs, which makes it both more challenging and more rewarding. I have probably flown this plane more than any other this year, and I think that shows up in the kind of confidence you see in the videos. Once you get dialed into the Yak, you feel like you can do almost anything with it.

Yak EXP Another SPARKS Sunset from Doc Austin on Vimeo.

Thanks to the Mayor Of South Tampa for the great camera work.

Here are a few Yak videos that I simply forgot to blog. We shoot so much video and the whole year has been such a blur. Things are starting to return to normal, but it's been a wicked ride.

Yak EXP Just Plain Raw Yak Abuse from Doc Austin on Vimeo.

Yak EXP More Stupid Yak Tricks from Doc Austin on Vimeo.

Another Team America Restoration

I'm kind of losing track of how many times I have restored this plane. It's already had two canopies, three rudders, two landing gear leg sets, and two sets of SFGS. Oh, and yeah, I ripped the motorbox out of it once and replaced that with really good results.

 

No matter what I do to this plane, I always seem to be able to get it looking like new again. This time I came out of a tumble inverted and downwind, and she slammed into the runway inverted. It exploded the canopy and cleaned the top off the rudder (stripping the servo too). I think the SFGs took the brunt of the abuse because the top 3/8" was ground right off them and lots of the geodetic construction was wrinkled. There was no repairing those things. Surprisingly the cowling didn't get chewed up. That was scratched a little but it buffed out with McGuire's cleaner wax.

 

I had a spare canopy from another misadventure, so I ordered a rudder and set of SFGs. That was all the parts it took to get her going again. With the rudder and SFGs replaced, that took out most of the graphics on the plane, but it also gave me the opportunity to do something a little different. Being red, white and blue, you probably already know what that means.  

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With a good coat of wax the old girl almost looks like a new airplane. As badly as I treat this plane it has certainly been a rewarding project. We've done articles on replacing the motorbox, tested some secret prototype motors and shot a lot of video with this airframe. A lot.

The 60" Extra project is coming up and all I have to do is put the motor in it and go. As such the yaks will probably not get much attention for awhile, but they have certainly been an eye opening airframe for me. They challenged me to become a better pilot, and I believe I have. Even though I have dinged this one up and destroyed several others, I think I came out the other side flying better and more confidently. For that reason alone, the entire Yak projects in both sizes have been ernormously rewarding.

Hell yeah.