Aris/Greece: noob with no flying clue reaching out for flying/construction help!

pataroulis

Junior Member
Hi all!

Name's Aris and I am from Greece. I only lately started building planes (with the FT method). While I tremendously enjoy building the planes (I have built the Nutball, the flyer, the delta, the old fogey, the tiny trainer AND the storch), I haven't been very lucky flying any of them .

I've been trying with the old fogey and it proves to be a hard plane (for me) to fly. I only have a soccer field's worth of flying space so I will not even try the storch (or a bix3 i got).

So my questions would probably be:

1. Why does the fogey fly like that:
Is it my flying, my building or is it how it is supposed to be?
(i can provide detailed pics of my builds if anyone is interested to help)

2. Which one of the following planes would be comfortable inside this soccer field:
Nutball,flyer,delta,tiny trainer, storch, bix3
there seems to be no place around here that I can fly them without losing them in a bottomless pit or being very near to the airport.

Thank you so much for any insights. While I have tried to read everything about the fogey and planes in general, (eg GC, thrust angles, mixing elevator with throttle, expo etc) i still manage to fly like a pendulum. Flight sims are not like that :)

Thanks again!

Aris
 

wilmracer

I build things that fly (sometimes)
Mentor
Looks like tail heavy situation, although it could be more than one thing off. Have you tried a power off glide? If you get that stall behavior on a powered off glide you're tail heavy. That is the first thing I'd check.

After that I'd check your control throws... are they to spec? It is possible that you're getting too much input from the elevator and/or rudder. Adding some exponential on your radio may smooth it out a bit.
 

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pataroulis

Junior Member
Looks like tail heavy situation, although it could be more than one thing off. Have you tried a power off glide? If you get that stall behavior on a powered off glide you're tail heavy. That is the first thing I'd check.

After that I'd check your control throws... are they to spec? It is possible that you're getting too much input from the elevator and/or rudder. Adding some exponential on your radio may smooth it out a bit.


Thank you for the suggestions! The image and the suggestion for a power-off glide were things I never knew !

I did a power-off glide, seems okay (i also tried with a heavier battery to bring the CG more to the nose and it went nose down immediately)

All the throws are up to spec and tried expos from 30 to 60% to no avail.

BUT..... due to the crashes that the frame sustained, the powerpod has taken an angle towards the ground and that seemed to fix things a little.
Could it be the thrust angle is wrong in my implementation (e.g. due to difference in foamcore weights etc?)

Apologies for writing in the hello thread. Any admin may freely move the thread.
 

CrashRecovery

I'm a care bear...Really?
Mentor
Welcome to the Group!!!!! This is a perfect place to ask. A couple options. Expo is nice but it still looks like your rates are way too high. If you cant dial them down you need to either do the radio hack FT showed not to long ago with the stick limit disks or remember little movements. "banging the sticks" as we say really does nothing but make for a crazy flying plane. If you have the Fogey on the CG it should fly great. Too much movement from the sticks and control surfaces makes it fly like an "old man drunk on ouzo". Just relax, i know its hard when you are learning to fly, have fun and just be easy with the plane and it will fly like a dream.
 
New to the hobby

Howdy! From Tulsa, Oklahoma, welcome I am new as well and my first flight was yesterday and I had built the ft ripslinger. and it flew like a dream, I didn't have to trim it out at all. I had a blast. And I'm on my way out the door to go again.

As far as your plane,have you checked your cg it may be tail have as a member had previously stated. Good luck, don't get discouraged.push on it is worth it!
 

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pataroulis

Junior Member
New updates! I made a new plane (the FT Tiny Trainer) and it flies WONDERFULLY. So, I am led to believe that it was not me, it was something with how I constructed the fogey.

I added a small video here:
to show you all!

I'll be making a new fogey, just to check the construction process again and see if I did something wrong on the first time.

Thank you all for your warm welcome.
 

eric75

Member
From the video of the Old Fogey, it looks like applying throttle is causing it to pitch up. This tends to happen when the motor is mounted very far below the wing (largest source of drag on the plane). This can be repaired by adjusting your thrust angle down a little bit so the center line of the motor crosses the approximate center of drag.

I'm glad your tiny trainer flies so well. Considering the number of full scale aircraft on final I see in the video, you may want to check with your local laws about flying near airports. The soccer field did not look like a bad flying site. After a little more practice with your smaller planes, it should be not problem for the Storch to take off and land there.
 

pataroulis

Junior Member
From the video of the Old Fogey, it looks like applying throttle is causing it to pitch up. This tends to happen when the motor is mounted very far below the wing (largest source of drag on the plane). This can be repaired by adjusting your thrust angle down a little bit so the center line of the motor crosses the approximate center of drag.

Will rebuild it from scratch (i really like the whole process and will happily go through it) and test the new one side by side with the old. Thanks for the suggestion. I might modify the powerpod anchor to be adjustable at least for testing (eg. velcro on the sides or bbq skewer holes everywhere :))

I'm glad your tiny trainer flies so well. Considering the number of full scale aircraft on final I see in the video, you may want to check with your local laws about flying near airports. The soccer field did not look like a bad flying site. After a little more practice with your smaller planes, it should be not problem for the Storch to take off and land there.

Regarding local laws, here in Greece, there is something going on currently (http://www.opengov.gr/yme/?p=3248). This law set has been put in public discussion and hopefully it will soon be released so I can get a UAV operator license (I hope the fee is not per aircraft as i've already spent enough on foamboard :) )

Until now, there were some scraps of model flying laws that allowed flying of UAVs (whatever that means for the local authorities) outside of a 3km perimeter of airports and under 400feet (120m). I am well within the limits (or outside, regarding proximity to airports).

The reason I chose the barley field instead of the soccer field is proximity to houses. I wouldn't want to knock on people's doors asking for my crashed plane inside their living room :) But the tiny trainer is a confidence builder.

Thank you so much for going over my videos !
 
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alibopo

Junior Member
Old Fogey flight issues.

Hi all!

Name's Aris and I am from Greece. I only lately started building planes (with the FT method). While I tremendously enjoy building the planes (I have built the Nutball, the flyer, the delta, the old fogey, the tiny trainer AND the storch), I haven't been very lucky flying any of them .

I've been trying with the old fogey and it proves to be a hard plane (for me) to fly. I only have a soccer field's worth of flying space so I will not even try the storch (or a bix3 i got).

So my questions would probably be:

1. Why does the fogey fly like that:
Is it my flying, my building or is it how it is supposed to be?
(i can provide detailed pics of my builds if anyone is interested to help)

2. Which one of the following planes would be comfortable inside this soccer field:
Nutball,flyer,delta,tiny trainer, storch, bix3
there seems to be no place around here that I can fly them without losing them in a bottomless pit or being very near to the airport.

Thank you so much for any insights. While I have tried to read everything about the fogey and planes in general, (eg GC, thrust angles, mixing elevator with throttle, expo etc) i still manage to fly like a pendulum. Flight sims are not like that :)

Thanks again!

Aris

Hi Aris,

I responded to your other post about the Old Fogey - and directed you to a solution, but I think it's worth picking-up on some of the misconceptions about this plane here.

First, if you set the CG at the point shown on the plans, that WILL WORK FINE. The tendency to nose up and go into the pendulum tail wagging is caused by you flying the plane TOO FAST! Compare how fast you went off to how fast the Old Fogey is going in the Flite Test videos.

The issue is partly due to 'differential lift' which is a result of the main wing being angled-up more than the horizontal stabiliser (high Angle of Incidence).

As the speed increases the main wing produces proportionally more lift than the tail and the tail appears to sag. A lot of flyers mistake this sag for the plane being tail heavy. The solution of adding more nose weight will work, but at the cost of increasing the plane's weight and losing its slow speed performance.

The common 'slightly tail heavy' solution of 'flying a bit faster' to make the tail more responsive, does not work with this plane, it just makes the problem worse.

My solution is to modify the airframe to lift the tail and alter the Angle of Incidence. The result is a plane that flies on the correct CG, is well mannered, has zero wing waggle, flies fast and slow, and stays in the air longer.

See how to do it here;

http://alipotter.co.uk/fogeyfix.htm

Cheers, alibopo.