Little Traveler Fundraiser Flight for St. Jude Children's Hospital - 2009

After a shaky test-flight at the Cairo airport, (NEVER wait until the day of your cross-country flight to find out if your model plane will even fly!!!!)...........

THE LITTLE TRAVELER flew from Olmsted, Illinois...to...Boaz, Illinois...a total of 15.3 actual miles...NON-STOP!....and landed in my Uncle Wayne's back yard without even flipping over on roll-out !!!!!!!!

A Sterling Minnie Mambo, powered by a Cox "Red Scorpion" .049 engine from Bernie and Xena at Cox International, and guided by two Cox Micro Servos (also from Cox International), flew the 15.3 mile route in approximately 34 minutes.

Driver: Mike Bloom, along with: Safety Officer...Timer...Official Witness...Search Coordinator...Vehicle/Aircraft Alignment Manager...and...Generally Positive Thinker...Rory Rubel, and myself, pursued the little aircraft in Mike's pick-up truck. It successfully traveled across miles of Illinois farmland, over the middle of Karnak, Illinois, and out to Boaz, where I held it in an orbit until it ran out of fuel (no throttle or engine control!).

I was able to glide it down, sliding in above the soybeans for a landing, and an end to all of the theories, angles, and ideas I've been bouncing off of friends for the past few months!

At present, I'm estimating a donation total of around $1400 in the bucket for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, an it's completely fine with me if any of you wishes to do a post-flight celebration donation! I've still got a bucket here at the airport office, Doug still has his at Tailwinds Hobby Center, and you can always email me for a meeting! I'm gonna hold everything for week to get caught up, then send the donations to St. Jude Hospital.

I'm kinda wild-eyed and wind-burned right now, but will have photos and video frames out tomorrow!

In October of 2009, aerophilanthropist and all-around good guy
Kim Stricker is planning to complete a daring 15.2-mile flight
of his specially constructed "Little Traveler" radio controlled

airplane to help out the kids at St. Jude Children's Hospital.

St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. Such aeronautical flights are highly dependent on weather and, at this time of year, length of the day, so please contact Kim to make your pledge ASAP. Updates will be posted here and on Kim's Facebook page as they become available.

Little Traveler all ready for the charity flight - Airplanes and Rockets

Here's a photo of the Little Traveler / Minnie Mambo with it's new paint. I rigged the controls today (tiny Cox Micro servos from Xenalook that almost get lost in the fuselage!). I'm now running the plumbing for the 4 ounce tank that I hope will fuel this little plane for it's 15 mile + non-stop flight.

I still don't have the info from St. Jude. In all fairness, I did kinda spring this on them with a fast-approaching deadline. In the event that I don't get some kind of dedicated site for contributions, perhaps those folks who'd like to support our flight could use one of the paths listed below:

Just a note to say that the Radio Controlled cross-country flight of "The Little Traveler" is still on. The plane is pretty much finished, with color paint coats and final assembly left to go. It looks like we ought to be able to pull off the flight sometime in mid-October. involves the range of the little airplane. I'd wanted to keep everything "severe old-school" and fly the plane with the factory type of fuel tank we all used as kids. However, the longest run I get with a Dragonfly factory tank (15 cc's) was a little over 6 minutes, meaning that our 15.2 mile flight would have around 5 or 6 fuel stops.

Planned flight for the St. Juds Hospital fund-raiser flight of Kim Stricker's Little Traveler - Airplanes and Rockets

After getting a note from Brent, asking about the possibility of doing the trip non-stop, I started re-thinking the whole deal, and decided to go for broke, and installed a 4 ounce fuel tank in the little plane. It may not sound like much, but to the Cox Red Scorpion .049 engine, it's almost a tanker load! I believe this should give the Little Traveler a flying time of about 37 minutes to make the 15.2 miles, providing that plane can lift itself off the ground. So now, we're going "Lindbergh Style"...non-stop!

Little Traveler taped and ready for red paint - Airplanes and Rockets

Also, the flight was supposed to originate from the ball field in Olmsted, but the the field has been converted for soccer, with grass growing over the infield dirt the Little Traveler was gonna use for a run-way. So, we're gonna light it up on main street, and climb out over the heli-pad behind the fire station.

I was hoping to streamline donations to St. Jude by seeing if they would set up a site to receive money in the name of the flight, but got directed to a web page out-lining various requirements and restrictions for their support (or is it their "receiving our support"?). Anyway, it looks like I'm just gonna collect the cash myself and send it to them after the fact. We'll work out a way to get the donations to me, and you all will just have to trust me!

Cox .049 Red Scorpion installed in the nose of the Little Traveler - Airplanes and Rockets

Little Traveler all framed up / tach showing RPM of the Cox .049 engine - Airplanes and Rockets

I've included the info pages that I'd previously posted on Facebook...for those hold-outs (like Jamie!) who DON'T have Facebook accounts...but may want to support the flight. The pages aren't updated yet...that's what this note is for.

Rory is still lined up as the official driver, photographer, timer, videographer, safety officer, P.R. Rep., counselor, emergency search coordinator, equipment grip, and certified witness to the flight...(after being bribed with the offer of a free dinner at Shoguns!)

That's about it...I've managed to get a lot of stuff going at once here lately, but still hope to get time to shoot some color paint on this thing and get some test flights in before it flys off into The Great Unknown!

As I said before, if The Little Traveler survives this Journey, it'll be sent on more ambitious adventures in the future.