Ft Flyer Flaps Experiment

[malik98]

I created an article and would like some feedback before it is published.

Hello, this is my first article and I wanted to do it on something I recently completed (5 minutes ago) and also to contribute to the great volume of articles on this great site. Anyway my landings with the FT Flyer have always been fast and smooth or slow and rough. To remedy this problem I decided to put flaps on my Flyer and they are 5" by 2".



(The flaps look like they are different sizes but it is merely an illusion)

I only had one servo so I created a pushrod system that went to both flaps. This consists of a piece of 2mm music wire with two 90 angles in the same direction. This was then hot glued onto each flap with a servo horn in the center. This horn connected to the one on the servo that was used to control it. These flaps work wonderfully in the air and slow it down to a crawl. At full throttle if I deploy the flaps it starts to crawl and hardly stays in the air. With landings it comes in nice and smooth with a slow touchdown. I have it connected to channel 5 and mixed with VR A on my FS-CT6B. This gives me infinite flap settings

I will try to add a video if I have time this week.
- See more at: http://flitetest.com/articles/ft-flyer-flaps-experiment?preview=1#sthash.S9J5HwXu.dpuf

 

[IFlyRCstuff]

Ah, the beauty of ingenuity. Seems like that would be really useful for landing. How much does the plane "skyrocket" when you put on full. I know you are using a dial (I have the fs-t6) so it has "variable rating" but if you have it rigged to a swich how bad is it. Now just add ailerons and retractable landing gear, a 2200kv motor with a 6x6 prop, hmm... I may have to do that just to do it hmm.. looks amazing and I am sure that that has helped.

 

[malik98]

I always use the dial so I can go halfway for takeoffs. I've tried to take off with full flaps and it almost runs out of takeoff room. It's fun testing the flaps at full throttle and seeing the speed change. I added flaps to it but after one was off it entered a nasty flat spin to its demise( building another without ailerons). On my landings I can hover it over the asphalt and then drop it down. Overall it's a very nice addition

 

[Fern-Fox]

My FT Flyer is front heavy because of the big wheels I just put on it, how do I fix that? I've tried to move the battery back using the CG reference marks but its still almost impossible to control. It flies great without the wheels

 

[malik98]

I would suggest using lighter big diameter wheels such as the dubro lite ones or to downsize the wheels. I use 2in foam wheels on asphalt and they work great.

 

[malik98]

UPDATE
I have now built another FT Flyer with black foam for stealth against those FT-22's. This one has 6" by 2" flaps opposed to the previous 5" by 2" ones. I have done some experiments with them and will outline them here.

Half Flaps on takeoff: Climbs very rapidly with good speed.
Full Flaps on takeoff: Flies some then hovers in midair at very very very slow rate of speed
Full speed to full flaps: Pitches up violently and slows down very rapidly
Landing with full flaps: Hard to bring back down to Earth, will get easier with practice
Landing with no flaps: Fast landings

Will update later if time permits, tell me any other tests you would like to see.
Cheers,
Malik

 

[malik98]

Adding a picture of my LEDs on my v2 FT Flyer, Video of some late evening flying

 

[IFlyRCstuff]

Haha!! That looks like ft flyer on steroids. With the landings I find that I set my end point at 80% and it comes down really nicely. (Sorry, I had to build one too that's my two cents also crazy idea number 2, why not put thrust vectoring on it, in the front of course, where else??

 

[Christopher14]

I think we need to start a FT Flyer mod thread.

 

[malik98]

Your wish is my command. I have started the thread in the Mad(Scratch) Builder's Corner. Link