Andre's Durafly SkyMule

Andre

Fly yes... land no.
Admin
Are are you going to put edfs on it? It would scream ^w^

I will do an EDF project soon for sure.
Just getting over a very busy 2 weeks with Flite Fest and a family wedding so looking forward to slowing down a touch.

Repair the bruised planes, flying and certainly recapping the events on a podcast.
 

Andre

Fly yes... land no.
Admin
You would have liked my first scratch build then.

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It flew for months even after that massive crash
 

Andre

Fly yes... land no.
Admin
They hauled that cargo plane vertical on launch.
9x6 worked well but I found 10" to be perfect.

 

Andre

Fly yes... land no.
Admin
SkyMule & Foam Tac

So this was the first real repair job I've done with Foam Tac.

I went slow. Piece by piece.

Used a little tape, pressure and time to try and get it as straight as possible.
I think I would have needed a hot tub to try and straighten the whole thing out but seems to have recovered.

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I did have to shave/sand some foam off the canopy and you can see a slight bow on the left side so I will use some rubber bands to ensure the top stays on.

Next to go over all the control surfaces and check everything twice.

Side not those spare wing tubes were too big so I ended up straighten the bent one.
 

Andre

Fly yes... land no.
Admin
Ready to go

Spent a bit of time on the Mule this past weekend.

Centred the rudder and the elevator control surfaces, put everything back as it supposed to be and event over the radio controls.

The Mule should be ready to hit the open sky again.

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I now think I understand the issues that caused the crash at FF2015.

I'd move the SkyMule over to the taranis radio and silly me I'd setup limits and rates.
Previously I'd flow the plane with no rates but I also suspect the elevator surfaces were not aligned and everything caused the plane to fly really poorly.

I think if I'd been able to get it back over the landing pad I would have been ok but then again the plane could have stalled and nosed in ever harder then me trying set it down in the soy field. Darn soy is hard ;)
 

razor02097

Rogue Drone Pilot
Looks good, glad you got her all back together! I know what you mean with moving models between radios... I found out how fun it is when moving a model to another radio forgetting to setup mixes and rates... When I put my FT flyer on my Futaba I forgot my "high alpha" mix I use when I fly in my really small back yard. After flipping the switch and tossing it in the air I realized my error as it landed itself in my locust tree :(
 

Andre

Fly yes... land no.
Admin
No we managed to recover 99% if of the pieces.

I just need some red paint now I guess.
 

Andre

Fly yes... land no.
Admin
Looks good, glad you got her all back together! I know what you mean with moving models between radios... I found out how fun it is when moving a model to another radio forgetting to setup mixes and rates... When I put my FT flyer on my Futaba I forgot my "high alpha" mix I use when I fly in my really small back yard. After flipping the switch and tossing it in the air I realized my error as it landed itself in my locust tree :(

Yep when I took off I was saying to Chris is felt weird, no control. So I went to my high rates and could control the plane but with the elevator and rudder out of whack it was rather entertaining.

Live and learn. I'll be sure to check things more closely next time I attempt a big road trip with larger planes.
 

Capt_Beavis

Posted a thousand or more times
I haven't had a crash like that in a while. We got kicked off the "flight field" right after the crash and we didn't recover all of the pieces. I just slapped on some gorilla glue and packing tape. Your repair job looks much better. The cool thing is you can't tell when it is in the air, that is what counts.