Andre's Durafly SkyMule

Andre

Fly yes... land no.
Admin
Skiing Yes. Football No.

Finally I was able to test the SkyMule skis on some snow.

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I was very happy with the results. Also trimming the prop shafts and balancing the props really improved things.

Then on the 2nd series I errrr clipped the upright on the football goal post. BOOOO.


- Results are not pretty.
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- Preparing for repairs. I used goop on the nacelle.
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- The right wing impact.
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- Surface scars.
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- Weighing down the nacelle.
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- Will test everything after a few more hours of drying.
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- The tabs were also glued with goop.
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- Tape applied.
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marc60

New member
A happy end after all. Always sad to see, but, luckily foam often can be repaired
Nice repair Andre. grts Marc
 

airhawk

Crashing Ace
The Durafly™ SkyMule Twin FPV Sports Model EPO 1500mm (Kit) arrived today.

I'm always a little worried when planes come by regular mail but this one was perfect.
Credit to HK for actually taking the time to wrap it up very nicely.

They flipped the outer box inside out so the contents would not visible.
Added extra layer of bubble wrap, cardboard and air packs.

Nothing was marked or damaged.

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My wife actually picked the Mule. She liked the skis and felt I would enjoy well this winter.

it looks like a mini guinea except well its not
 

Andre

Fly yes... land no.
Admin
SkiMule


What a plane. My day ended after the repaired ski pivot mount broke again but before it was a blast.

The SkyMule is amazing on skis. If you are on the fence about the plane oh get one.

Quickly becoming my favourite winter plane.
I have a spare set of skis to get going again but will try and repair the pivot mount.
Maybe epoxy? Would be great to get an aluminium mount made.
Oh to have a 3D printer.

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Foam Addict

Squirrel member
Very nice! You have done a great job with this build Andre! Sorry to hear about the ski breaking, but at least you can fix it.
 

Andre

Fly yes... land no.
Admin
Yeah teach me not to bring a 3rd plane to the field.
My "Ringer" is usually the FT Racer. ;)
 

Andre

Fly yes... land no.
Admin
Oh no. I think the Mule will see a lot of air time this season.

She'll be ready for this coming weekend.
 
Hello Andre

I got my mule 3 months ago but due to extreme weather (1 meter snow in february) and rain in march it has seen very little airtime. I maidened it when there was snow so i used the skis. Worked brilliant ! Now the snow has been packed so it is more like ice than snow. Turns out the ski's are totaly wrongly constructed. If you look at the mount (on the ski) there is a gap between the ski and the black plastic mount. So in case of a hard landing it will always shatter the mount but possibly save the ski or the wing mount. I will redesign this so it has a flexible mount instead. An idea i have is to use the "fat" plastic that you can find in plastic food containers that you can use in microvave. It is flexible and it dosnt get brittle in cold. So my idea is to remove the plastic mount from the ski and make a "spring" similar to the steel springs in trucks that is just a couple of stripes of that fat plastic. I would mount it to the steel axel using a piece of wood with a hole drilled in. I would glue the small wood (or plastic) block to the springs. The springs would be screwed to the skis with the original screws. This would give a bit of flex on each landing i hope. Since the ski's themself are very brittle too. It is wrong plastic for ski's also. It should be the "fat" type that is a bit flexible. I have broken two ski mounts on landings on ice. I switched the back skis for wheels. The only thing that happend then was i broke the front ski mount also. So now im all "wheels" on the ice. Time to start experimenting with the mounts. I dont want to order them from china. Damn the snow is gone before they get here. Usually takes like 30 days to Sweden.

Did you FPV the mule yet ? I maidend it with FPV yesterday and today i added the go pro on it. Amazing it doesnt feel like there is a camera mounted on it :). I mounted it on top of the fuselage infront of the wing using hot glue to attach a old used go pro mount. I have the FPV camera on the FPV pod. I dont want to have the go pro on the pod. Very stable platform.

My mule is totaly stock. I think the motors where upgraded by HK tho so now they are DT 900 or something like that. Even the propps are the ones that came with the mule. So far i havent managed to break them upon landing. The landings have been pretty good. But aparently not good enough for the ski's. I know other props are more efficient but ill wait with switching them until i break the ones that are on now. I will switch to two bladed props.

FPV equipment i got is a small security camera, G OSD 3, fatshark 250mW 5.8 GHz with cloverleaf antennas. I use fatshark goggels also. I would like to have a groundstation but i dont have one yet. The flight battery i have used so far is 2200 mAh, 2700mAh and a 850 mAh for the VTX. Edit: i purchased two 4000 mAh 3S batteries but i havent used them yet. I wanted to get a feel how it handles with the smaller ones first. With the 2200 mAh and no FPV equipment it glides pretty well.


Other FPV craft: Popwing 900 mm, Skyscout (Easystar 2) and well the phantom 1.1.1. Most boring of them all is the phantom. So incredibly slow and messes up the video signal totaly so no range on it either.

Look forward to hear more about your Skymule escapades

Carolos Rex
Northern Sweden near arctic circle
 
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Andre

Fly yes... land no.
Admin
Carolos Rex I can't believe I forgot to post the ski update here.

So I broke two of the forward mounts. One when I hit the football post, it failed after I tried to glue it.
The 2nd let go on landing one day. Yeah the plastic is very brittle on the super cold conditions.

An engineer friend offered to make me a aluminum bracket.

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I've only flown the plane once since the upgraded bracket was used but the temperatures were so cold the plane and pilot were not performing well ;.

When things warm up I'll get it out again for more testing.
We may need to hollow out some sections to get the weight down.
 

Andre

Fly yes... land no.
Admin
Too answer your other questions. I decided I like flying the SkyMule so much that I won't FPV it.
Motor wise I'm running some 2830-11 1000KV motors with 10x4.5" SF props, 35A ESC and 3S 4000 batteries.
Plenty of power on tap.

But yeah it is a wonderful plane to fly. I'm looking forward to having all kinds of fun with the plane this spring/summer.
We have the HK candy dropper and I may put it on the belly but I think it interferes with the landing gear...

Good luck and have fun as well ;)
 

makattack

Winter is coming
Moderator
Mentor
Nice! I sure do miss having easy access to folks who can operate a CNC. I would have been nice if I were into this hobby when I did, or else, I'd have more than a few novelty keychain / bottle openers!
 

Andre

Fly yes... land no.
Admin
We may have to send the design file overseas and produce a dozen of these brackets.

A.
 
Wow nice mount :) Never even considerd making it out of alu i was stuck in the "plastic" so to speak. The original mount would have made sense if it was in aluminium. But the brittle plastic one was just a joke. I made a perfect landing today and still the front mount "threw a rod". So now im actually thinking it should have a spring to soften the blow on landing like real landing ger has. Or be of some plastic that is not brittle.

Carolus Rex
 

Andre

Fly yes... land no.
Admin
3D print something?

I tried filling in the gaps with epoxy but that failed as well.

I've not flown the Mule in weeks. Temperatures have been far to low to be comfortable.

May have to ship that file out to have come brackets made overseas or something.

Andre.