Maiden flight this morning! I ended up falling asleep last night and didn't get to finish things up. To add to it, I slept in
so a mad rush ensued after eating breakfast. Install receiver, motor, aileron control arms and pushrods. I ended up taping off the flaps as I needed taller control arms and I didn't have them printed. I still need to update the drawings with the cutouts in the wing for the pushrods (reminder for later).
Headed to the field and stopped at the hobby shop first to get some spare props (expecting the worst). I love my LHS - Rory took a look and highly suggested some nose weight as it was a tad tail heavy. Two flattened bullets later
ROFLMAO:
) provided an additional 27g of weight to put the CG at 5cm back for leading edge. Luckily I picked up a 10x6 prop as well (foreshadowing...)
Up to the field and the wind was mild to start, but picked up a bit as the morning wore on. (ended up like 10mph+) My son tossed my mini Zero up for a bit of confidence building. One thing to note for anyone reading - I've now built 5 master series styled planes, but have flown exactly zero of them as of last night! The largest I've flown is my FT Bronco in low wind off ReadiBoard runway.
So to get past the suspense...
We launched it with a 2200mAh 3S and a 10x5 prop. It flew quite well! But as you'll hear on the video once I get it uploaded, the 10x5 prop left it quite underpowered. Maybe with a 4S (which I did not have). My throws were a bit off and took mental notes during flight. I noted a very weak rudder, which ended up being pretty much no rudder
as the adjuster wasn't tightened down enough. Having no tools and also having glued the canopy on in a rush left me with taping off the rudder as well and flying bank-and-yank (note for whomever, I do love the rudder, and it would have been much more enjoyable had I actually tightened things down
, well, maybe not that much more enjoyable - I HAD A BLAST!!!)
I swapped out the battery for a new one as the 10x5 had me needing to run pretty much full throttle to get out of the mushy stage. Installing that aforementioned 10x6 prop and up for another 5 minutes. The 10x6 prop did the trick and gave a nice cruise speed at about 50-60% throttle.
In all, a little trimming and maybe a touch of up thrust angle (then again, maybe not) and she flies quite well! We came home in with a little dirt on the nose from a rough landing (which I say the rudder would have really helped with!) and no wrinkles that weren't already there! Looks like she is going to the paint booth.
So the final notes:
10x6 prop
2200mAh 3S battery
max draw 20A
2216 1120kV motor
needed 27g nose weight
all-up-weight of 840g
CG at 5cm back (pretty much front edge of spar)
Aileron throws needed to be a bit aggressive at 18-20 degrees (although I may have been flying a bit slow)
Elevator throws at 13-15 degrees
Nice glide path, might need a touch of up thrust angle
I did try an 11x5.5 prop at home on the power meter and it peaked at 22A - I think I'm goign to give that prop a try next flight!
