FTFC20 Howard DGA-6 (Racing) designed by Mayan

[mayan]

I wasn't thinking tail heavy. It's just a VERY short rear fuselage. That means squirly. I learned that with my MSBP design. I had to elongate it. That's the reason the SE-5 is such a handful. You've got it balanced, and I believe it will fly. It's going to be a handful, though!

We’ll see very soon, just dropped off the kids at school, going to pack up and off to the field.

 

[buzzbomb]

We’ll see very soon, just dropped off the kids at school, going to pack up and off to the field.

Ooohhhh Boy! If I were smiling any harder, my jaws would crack!

 

[mayan]

For a few days now I've been wanting to maiden this model, ever since it started looking more like the real plane. Yesterday I work all through the day to load up the electronics and finish the build, at least most of it. I first loaded servos and did control surface linkage on the wings. Then I loaded the motor and tested the CG without a battery, looking at where it balanced out I understood what batteries can where work and where to locate the elevator and rudder servos if in the tail boom or fuselage. I choose to go with the tail boom but think that I might change it for the next version. Why? Because I understood that I much rather take the battery back closer to the CofG then had it pushed all the way forward up against the firewall. Generally thinking about it when looking at the model real estate and the way it balances out you can do so much with it in terms of power setups.

The maiden was uhmmmm... Don't know what to make of it. I took @buzzbomb advice and feeling comfortable with ground take offs, added the landing gear. The ground take off was prefect, don't know about ground taxi handling because I didn't try it, I will next time though. The plane seemed to have enough power to stay airborne but the handling was horrible. It was very hard to make turns with it and every turn with ailerons was like riding a roller coaster, I can't recall trying to turn with rudder so don't know what authority that has on the flight of the plane. I think I started off flying the plane with 70% deflection rates and 30% expo and then switched too 100% deflection rates with 30% expo but not 100% sure about that .

The plane had 3 crashes, the 1st was a crash into a corn field which did no damage but took me some time to find. The 2nd was a cart roll on take off and the 3rd killed it was a nose dive into paved road. It did damage that made no sense to repair at the field considering the plane wasn't handling to well. Though the damage can and will be repaired with re-enforcements and notes have been take for V2.

All in all I am happy that it flew and certain that I'll work out the handling issues that I have with it. I am so pleased that it flew that now I am more dedicated to this project. Dedicated to make it fly good, easy to build and look amazing . Here are some pictures from the field and the maiden video. Any comments, tips, ideas but how to make it fly better please post them. Thanks in advance and Enjoy.

In terms of size well lets just say that it can fit in trunk of my Suzuki Swift.

Real estate view.

 

[CarolineTyler]

Just watched the maiden video for the version 1. Does it pitch up when applying power? It looked that way. Could not tell from the video but did you get to trying a glide? If it handles better in glide but pitches up with power then it's your thrust line, which can be dealt with by adding more down thrust.
At the beginning I thought it might be a little tail heavy but it was flying pretty flat once you got it up a bit so it's probably not that.
Looks great in the air!!!!.
Oh, high wings I've noticed with flying my big 40 inch trainer like turns with a good helping of rudder.
Here's to the next flight!!!

 

[Vimana89]

As @CarolineTyler mentioned,looks like there's a bit of imperfect thrust angle involved. What I'm noticing is the ailerons just don't seem to want to turn it smoothly by themselves at lower speed. This makes sense to me, because the wings on your plane are very long and high mounted, so you have a ton of inherent stability plus no prop wash whatsoever blowing across your ailerons to assist them, so they are sort of fighting the stability of your plane without the authority to turn it smoothly, especially at lower speeds. Coordinating them with rudder will probably give you the authority to turn better, and perhaps making the ailerons a bit larger. I'm still very much a novice and could be wrong but that's my two cents. Awesome job on at least getting it to fly on the first maiden, I'm sure once you polish it up it will be great👍.

 

[Hai-Lee]

For a few days now I've been wanting to maiden this model, ever since it started looking more like the real plane. Yesterday I work all through the day to load up the electronics and finish the build, at least most of it. I first loaded servos and did control surface linkage on the wings. Then I loaded the motor and tested the CG without a battery, looking at where it balanced out I understood what batteries can where work and where to locate the elevator and rudder servos if in the tail boom or fuselage. I choose to go with the tail boom but think that I might change it for the next version. Why? Because I understood that I much rather take the battery back closer to the CofG then had it pushed all the way forward up against the firewall. Generally thinking about it when looking at the model real estate and the way it balances out you can do so much with it in terms of power setups.

The maiden was uhmmmm... Don't know what to make of it. I took @buzzbomb advice and feeling comfortable with ground take offs, added the landing gear. The ground take off was prefect, don't know about ground taxi handling because I didn't try it, I will next time though. The plane seemed to have enough power to stay airborne but the handling was horrible. It was very hard to make turns with it and every turn with ailerons was like riding a roller coaster, I can't recall trying to turn with rudder so don't know what authority that has on the flight of the plane. I think I started off flying the plane with 70% deflection rates and 30% expo and then switched too 100% deflection rates with 30% expo but not 100% sure about that .

The plane had 3 crashes, the 1st was a crash into a corn field which did no damage but took me some time to find. The 2nd was a cart roll on take off and the 3rd killed it was a nose dive into paved road. It did damage that made no sense to repair at the field considering the plane wasn't handling to well. Though the damage can and will be repaired with re-enforcements and notes have been take for V2.

All in all I am happy that it flew and certain that I'll work out the handling issues that I have with it. I am so pleased that it flew that now I am more dedicated to this project. Dedicated to make it fly good, easy to build and look amazing . Here are some pictures from the field and the maiden video. Any comments, tips, ideas but how to make it fly better please post them. Thanks in advance and Enjoy.

View attachment 143271
In terms of size well lets just say that it can fit in trunk of my Suzuki Swift.

View attachment 143272
Real estate view.

View attachment 143273
View attachment 143274
View attachment 143275
View attachment 143277

Nice looking bird for a V1! It looks close to being a good plane! Refer to PM.

Have fun!

 

[Vimana89]

Sometimes,watching it again, it looks so erratic it could possibly be a mechanical or trim issue related to your servos or linkages. Looking forward to see how you improve it and work out the problems.

 

[buzzbomb]

For a few days now I've been wanting to maiden this model, ever since it started looking more like the real plane. Yesterday I work all through the day to load up the electronics and finish the build, at least most of it. I first loaded servos and did control surface linkage on the wings. Then I loaded the motor and tested the CG without a battery, looking at where it balanced out I understood what batteries can where work and where to locate the elevator and rudder servos if in the tail boom or fuselage. I choose to go with the tail boom but think that I might change it for the next version. Why? Because I understood that I much rather take the battery back closer to the CofG then had it pushed all the way forward up against the firewall. Generally thinking about it when looking at the model real estate and the way it balances out you can do so much with it in terms of power setups.

The maiden was uhmmmm... Don't know what to make of it. I took @buzzbomb advice and feeling comfortable with ground take offs, added the landing gear. The ground take off was prefect, don't know about ground taxi handling because I didn't try it, I will next time though. The plane seemed to have enough power to stay airborne but the handling was horrible. It was very hard to make turns with it and every turn with ailerons was like riding a roller coaster, I can't recall trying to turn with rudder so don't know what authority that has on the flight of the plane. I think I started off flying the plane with 70% deflection rates and 30% expo and then switched too 100% deflection rates with 30% expo but not 100% sure about that .

The plane had 3 crashes, the 1st was a crash into a corn field which did no damage but took me some time to find. The 2nd was a cart roll on take off and the 3rd killed it was a nose dive into paved road. It did damage that made no sense to repair at the field considering the plane wasn't handling to well. Though the damage can and will be repaired with re-enforcements and notes have been take for V2.

All in all I am happy that it flew and certain that I'll work out the handling issues that I have with it. I am so pleased that it flew that now I am more dedicated to this project. Dedicated to make it fly good, easy to build and look amazing . Here are some pictures from the field and the maiden video. Any comments, tips, ideas but how to make it fly better please post them. Thanks in advance and Enjoy.

View attachment 143271
In terms of size well lets just say that it can fit in trunk of my Suzuki Swift.

View attachment 143272
Real estate view.

View attachment 143273
View attachment 143274
View attachment 143275
View attachment 143277

Congratulations on the maiden! You've still got work to do, but darn it, it flew! My own 2c on the flight stability? We knew it was going to be squirley because of the short rear fuselage. The back end of the plane doesn't have the authority to smooth out the flight. It's just not far enough back from the main wing.

You want to stay true to the original design, though. Before you make any major design changes? If it's currently easily repaired and put back into the air, I'd say add about 20 grams of nose weight and just see what happens. I'll bet you a cold one, next time we get together, that it flies a whole lot better.

 

[jfaleo1]

OK for what it is worth, Thrust line and most likely tail heavy, as others have noted, but also consider differential aileron travel. That is the aileron that goes up travels further than the one that goes down. This creates (simplified version) note drag on the wing that goes down reducing the need to coordinate the turn with rudder though it may not eliminate it. Flat high wings have adverse yaw so this is how full scale airplanes deal with the issue, even in large business jets. You can do this through linkage and servo arm adjustments. If the servos are on the bottom of the wing angle the servo arms both aft when in neutral hopefully that will help after you solve the balance issue. One more thing what is the incidence of the wing compared to the tail? If it is too much it will cause the ballooning as well.
As I said this is all just thoughts from watching the video, hope some of it works.

 

[Hai-Lee]

OK for what it is worth, Thrust line and most likely tail heavy, as others have noted, but also consider differential aileron travel. That is the aileron that goes up travels further than the one that goes down. This creates (simplified version) note drag on the wing that goes down reducing the need to coordinate the turn with rudder though it may not eliminate it. Flat high wings have adverse yaw so this is how full scale airplanes deal with the issue, even in large business jets. You can do this through linkage and servo arm adjustments. If the servos are on the bottom of the wing angle the servo arms both aft when in neutral hopefully that will help after you solve the balance issue. One more thing what is the incidence of the wing compared to the tail? If it is too much it will cause the ballooning as well.
As I said this is all just thoughts from watching the video, hope some of it works.

Under the wing mounted servos normally require the servo arm neutral position canted towards the wing LE. The drag, the cause of adverse yaw caused by the operation of the aileron is normally higher when the aileron is lowered towards the wing under side and lesser than when raised or moved upwards towards the upper wing surface.

Simply put when you lower the aileron the lift on that wing increases and so does its drag whereas the raising of the aileron causes a decrease in the wing lift and a somewhat lesser drag because lift induced drag is decreased!

I think you may have made a typo in your post!

Have fun!

 

[jfaleo1]

Under the wing mounted servos normally require the servo arm neutral position canted towards the wing LE.

I think you may have made a typo in your post!

Have fun!

I do believe you are correct sorry about that thanks for the catch.👍🏻

 

[mayan]

Wow so many great tips here and so much to consider. I have to get another flight on it as is to figure out the issue. I think I'll go with simple fixes first like raising the wing up a bit with a washer. I am sure this plane will fly good just need to figure out the hard turn stalls. When the plane was test gilded at home with my wife it came in very well leveled that's why I think it's not a tail heavy issue. I have to repair it tonight so I can take it out again soon, so more to come as I fix the plane.

 

[mayan]

Alright folks so V1 has been repaired, and is ready for tomorrow's outing, hoarry!
I won't make this post long because I am out of energy these last two days, hate the morning shifts at work they are x10 more busy and not worth it money wise . Any how here are some pictures of the damage that the plane got after nose diving into a paved road (more like me losing control and crashing).

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And here are a few pictures of the repaired airframe.

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I still need to connect the ESC to the motor and check that it is spinning in the right direction and do a balance check before tomorrow which is what I am going to do now before going to sleep. Tomorrow I'll be filming the maiden off my iPhone with a tripod so you and I might get a more clear view of the actual handling. Tomorrow I also want to do some tests that I should have tried doing on the first maiden and would have helped me make the 2nd maiden better. So tomorrow I plan to test these things and please let me know if you think there is something else that I should check.
1) Taxi checking, drive the plane around like a car and see how it handles taxing through the runway.
2) Check glide slope, take the plane up high and kill the throttle to check how steep the glide slope is.
3) Throttle test, fly full throttle and decrease it slowly to see what speed gives the best handling. I have a feeling that some issues are related to the speed I was trying to flying at.
4) Control surface check, check each control surface separately to understand what control authority each control surface has over the plane's flight.

Looking forward for any more checks that you all recommend I do it's never to late as I'll be looking in for feedback also while I'll be at the field.

 

[mayan]

So took this baby out for another maiden this morning to do a bit of testing, couldn't get all the tests that I wanted done though .

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1) Taxi checking, drive the plane around like a car and see how it handles taxing through the runway.

DONE

2) Check glide slope, take the plane up high and kill the throttle to check how steep the glide slope is.

PARTLY DONE

3) Throttle test, fly full throttle and decrease it slowly to see what speed gives the best handling. I have a feeling that some issues are related to the speed I was trying to flying at.
4) Control surface check, check each control surface separately to understand what control authority each control surface has over the plane's flight.

NOT DONE

I also played with the wing incidence though and found out that I should add a slope to the wing table of 1mm. The plane is totaled as of now and needs to be rebuilt, but I am happy with that. I have learned some things about the plane through these crashes although some things are still unclear to me. I already have a list of a few things that need to be addressed and problems that need to be solved.

Need to:
1) Find a solution for the wing servos to make them more accessible.
2) Add the wing incidence.
3) Re-enforce some areas.
4) Tidy up look pieces like canopy and covers.
5) Give the ailerons different deflection rates mechanically (i'll explain when I do it related to a tip I got from @jfaleo1).

Here are some pictures of damage that was field repaired, also look how much space you have inside.

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At some point the plane was so beat up that I just hand launched into the air and when it crashed it was totaled. All the electronics seem fine but I'll need to do a better check some time else.

And here is the video of maiden number two and the tests that I attempted to do.

Please let me know what you think. If you have any ideas as to what is causing this death spin please do let me know.

 

[CarolineTyler]

To me those sprials look like a tip stall. Also it does look a little bit tail heavy.
Why not add the undercamber that Flitetest often use to add stability.

 

[mayan]

To me those sprials look like a tip stall. Also it does look a little bit tail heavy.
Why not add the undercamber that Flitetest often use to add stability.

Is there a way to exit them? Undercamber like in the Spitfire?

 

[bracesport]

@mayan - I agree with Caroline - it would be an easy test to make a second wing with some under camber at the tips (like the regular FT wings) - I also wonder if your current wing chord (thickest section) is a tad biased towards the centre of the wing rather than 1/3 from the front (or it could be the TE is too thick)?

 

[mayan]

@mayan - I agree with Caroline - it would be an easy test to make a second wing with some under camber at the tips (like the regular FT wings) - I also wonder if your current wing chord (thickest section) is a tad biased towards the centre of the wing rather than 1/3 from the front (or it could be the TE is too thick)?

I thought about that, V2 will have two set of wings I have stacked up on 6 more 70x100cm of FB for the task and a few others .

 

[CarolineTyler]

Is there a way to exit them? Undercamber like in the Spitfire?

Yes, but since your wing is even chord mainly you will not need a large amount.

 

[mayan]

BTW what causes a tip stall?