Flite Test Design Engagement Challenge

Ok so who’s all gonna be part of the challenge, head count!


  • Total voters
    42

FlyingWithRyan

Elite member
The P36 took to the air last night. Very touchy, loves to hard climb with throttle. Cut the throttle and it glided beautifully. Got a bit far away trying to trim and lost orientation - nose-dived in a spiral from 100' :eek: to not much more than a broken prop and a wrinkled cowl! I do have it on video - I'll get it edited and up hopefully this evening. So now the learning part! I think my dihedral is a bit shallow from the original. I also think my undercamber at the wing tips is a touch small. Is my thinking correct so far as touchy handling / stability? (I also noticed that my build could have been cleaner - the hstab and wings are not perfect 'parallel' - gotta check measurements on the sides on the plan) Then onto the insane desire for it to climb hard. It's not cg - cutting the throttle and gliding in was quite impressive. I tried to get the thrust line right as original, but with foam thicknesses and such it might be off a little.

Going to go over the plans tonight to see. Maybe shim the motor and play with thrust angle? (I've got a bit of right angle now) I've got to recall and watch the video again - it might have wanted to turn left on hard throttle as well. So, to wrap this up - back to the drawing board!:LOL::unsure::poop:
Yeah give er some down thrust angle to counteract that hard climb
 

The Hangar

Fly harder!
Mentor
The P36 took to the air last night. Very touchy, loves to hard climb with throttle. Cut the throttle and it glided beautifully. Got a bit far away trying to trim and lost orientation - nose-dived in a spiral from 100' :eek: to not much more than a broken prop and a wrinkled cowl! I do have it on video - I'll get it edited and up hopefully this evening. So now the learning part! I think my dihedral is a bit shallow from the original. I also think my undercamber at the wing tips is a touch small. Is my thinking correct so far as touchy handling / stability? (I also noticed that my build could have been cleaner - the hstab and wings are not perfect 'parallel' - gotta check measurements on the sides on the plan) Then onto the insane desire for it to climb hard. It's not cg - cutting the throttle and gliding in was quite impressive. I tried to get the thrust line right as original, but with foam thicknesses and such it might be off a little.

Going to go over the plans tonight to see. Maybe shim the motor and play with thrust angle? (I've got a bit of right angle now) I've got to recall and watch the video again - it might have wanted to turn left on hard throttle as well. So, to wrap this up - back to the drawing board!:LOL::unsure::poop:
Well congrats on the maiden - at least it flew! Increasing the under-camber would definitely help, as well as increasing the size of the tail feathers by 10% or 15%. Also, if the plane is pitching up with more throttle, you need to add a little down thrust.
 

The Fopster

Master member
I've got some plans worked out for a simple scale build of a 1930's air racer as my entry into the challenge. Today I found time to edit some video I shot when I went to look for a suitable subject and found the Miles Hawk Speed Six that I'm going to build - here's my museum trip. Sorry about the very low audio level - I'm not much of an expert working with video...

Take a look at the collection here: Shuttleworth.org

Worth a visit if you're in the area...

 
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bwarz

Master member
I think my goal will be mods to the airframe to get it stabilized. my son has already said he wants one and I think it'd just be easier for anyone who builds it to not need to fiddle much with the radio. it's cool to be able to bandaid a deficiency with the tech but I'm going to give it my best effort to figure out what I did wrong! it'll end up being more stable all around
 

The Hangar

Fly harder!
Mentor
I've got some plans worked out for a simple scale build of a 1930's air racer as my entry into the challenge. Today I found time to edit some video I shot when I went to look for a suitable subject and found the Miles Hawk Speed Six that I'm going to build - here's my museum trip. Sorry about the very low audio level - I'm not much of an expert working with video...

Take a look at the collection here: Shuttleworth.org

Worth a visit if you're in the area...

That's going to be an awesome project!
 

FlyingWithRyan

Elite member
I've got some plans worked out for a simple scale build of a 1930's air racer as my entry into the challenge. Today I found time to edit some video I shot when I went to look for a suitable subject and found the Miles Hawk Speed Six that I'm going to build - here's my museum trip. Sorry about the very low audio level - I'm not much of an expert working with video...

Take a look at the collection here: Shuttleworth.org

Worth a visit if you're in the area...

I admire your process sir!
 

bwarz

Master member
I'm just about wrapping up the plans for the P36 with them optimized for printing to 11x17 (I have access to a printer at work that will do that size) and keep me from taping too many things up:rolleyes::D I discovered in my redesigning that when I cut off the original cowl to fit the rounded and built out the mount for the motor, it ended up with more up angle than I would have thought (like 1-2 degrees easy)! That would help to explain its overwhelming desire to pitch up on anything beyond a light throttle. Balance was nice and glide was spot on:p The weather has been a bit windy here (too much for my skill level) and time has been tight as well, so I haven't gotten to modify and retest. After some tweaks to the wings and the desgin mods to the motor mount area, I'll be printing tomorrow and rebuilding from the ground up this weekend. Hopefully building the front end from scratch will help me to keep things straight!:rolleyes::cautious::unsure:
Screenshot from 2020-09-04 01-04-58.png
 

FlyingWithRyan

Elite member
I'm just about wrapping up the plans for the P36 with them optimized for printing to 11x17 (I have access to a printer at work that will do that size) and keep me from taping too many things up:rolleyes::D I discovered in my redesigning that when I cut off the original cowl to fit the rounded and built out the mount for the motor, it ended up with more up angle than I would have thought (like 1-2 degrees easy)! That would help to explain its overwhelming desire to pitch up on anything beyond a light throttle. Balance was nice and glide was spot on:p The weather has been a bit windy here (too much for my skill level) and time has been tight as well, so I haven't gotten to modify and retest. After some tweaks to the wings and the desgin mods to the motor mount area, I'll be printing tomorrow and rebuilding from the ground up this weekend. Hopefully building the front end from scratch will help me to keep things straight!:rolleyes::cautious::unsure: View attachment 178438
Lookin good
 

Crawford Bros. Aeroplanes

Legendary member
I haven't really been around for a few days, I've been busy with Dove season and what have you. Haven't had a chance to work on the DH Mosquito yet but it's coming, eventually. I have been dialing back my RC involvement a bit though. Since I'm leaving to the USMC in a few weeks it doesn't make too much sense to be building a new plane every week and I'm putting stuff into storage. That being said would anyone in SoCal be interested in a few of my planes? I'm thinking about selling off or giving away a few, maybe a glider or two and some of the bigger ones like Draco. I'd rather someone else fly them then let them fall apart in the heat while I'm gone. I live about 20 min north of Prado Airpark is anyone's interested.
 

bwarz

Master member
Ditto on life catching up. Haven't had much to post as I always forget to grab the cam when building and flying weather has been crappy. I do have a new build just about done on the tweaked and modified plans, but lost a bit of motivation cuz I'm not liking how the build of the cowl is going :oops::confused::mad: The plans just don't give me a good feeling about the accuracy of the build with respect to thrust angle, which I believe the be my flight issue at this point. Working through it, but still a bit de-motivated :mad:

To hopefully resurrect things here, perhaps I will make a point of getting some pics up this evening and hopefully the weather will cooperate and I can get a V2 maiden in soon. BTW my son is still bugging me about the BV141design...
 

The Hangar

Fly harder!
Mentor
Welp life got the best of me and Idk when I can find time to finish the bipe. Seems the thread has died as well. Rip.
Yeah, same - I just haven’t had much time to give to finishing the F7F. I finally got adobe illustrator back so I should be able to finish up the plans soon though.