Glow to electric conversion: 201 Level Course
- Thread starter willsonman
- Start date
Well, After heading to the field to address something in my trailer I decided to throw caution into the wind and maiden the B-25 so the following is my flight report.
Basic field assembly went fine with nothing unexpected. I did make a minor misstep and cracking a small spot of the belly cover but that can easily be repaired when I go to glass the airframe later. Full system pressure of 100psi went well with nothing popping or hissing. I left the airplane assembled and in the sun for about an hour while I serviced my trailer to let things heat up and expose possible failures. Nothing failed though I did lose about 25psi of pressure. There's a small leak somewhere under heat but not enough to worry about the flight timer. Batteries charged and I did a taxi test. Nothing notable as things were tracking well though I had forgotten how bumpy our field is for warbirds. Taxi back and it was time for a range check. All fine there too. Let my nerves cool off and did some tidying up in the trailer and then just plugged it all in and went for it. Wind was slightly cross with about 5-10mph. Lined up and throttle up slowly to 2/3 and we were off the ground a bit soon with leveling out keeping the nose pointed level. Airspeed gained made me more comfortable to pull back and gain some altitude. Nose-down was apparent but not intrusive. A couple of clicks of right roll and we were mostly trimmed. Some refining was needed. I felt comfortable enough to finally let the gear go up and the airplane was much more neutral. A touch nose heavy, which helps keep things stable. No bad tendencies. Stall was predictable and flaps down had no major ballooning effects. Landing speed with flaps was very manageable, even though the flap down measurement was half that of the recommended throw. With 4 minutes gone on the timer it was time to bring her down so I made a go around and she predictably slowed with the flaps down. I was lined up with three in the green (all gear legs down and locked) so I let her settle in and made a nice soft touch down only to find a bump on the ground to toss me back up. She settled shortly after with not major issues or worse for the wear. Taxi back had the flaps pulled up and all control surfaces still working. Upon shutdown I noticed that one of the main battery plugs had jostled out a bit. It was worrisome so I think I'll spread out the tines for the XT60 plug as well as but some velcro around them to keep them more secured. I'd hate to lose the airplane because a battery plug vibrated out. TO be fair, this could just be from the very abrupt vibration from landing but that's hard to tell. At least eh velcro held the batteries in place just fine but I really had no reservation about that.
I'll note that after I disassembled the airplane there was no sign of significant heat on the power wires running from the battery to the ESCs. I should also note that the instructions did not mention anything about counter rotation of motors and I did implement this on this aircraft. I made no changes to the thrust angles from stock and experienced zero issues in flight. On the ground, I used minimal inputs to correct take off direction, which was the main point why I wanted this in the first place. It was an easy flight that nobody but me saw. Nobody there to get so much as a picture. My apologies but there you go.
I think we are done with this conversion and ready to move forward with modification.
Basic field assembly went fine with nothing unexpected. I did make a minor misstep and cracking a small spot of the belly cover but that can easily be repaired when I go to glass the airframe later. Full system pressure of 100psi went well with nothing popping or hissing. I left the airplane assembled and in the sun for about an hour while I serviced my trailer to let things heat up and expose possible failures. Nothing failed though I did lose about 25psi of pressure. There's a small leak somewhere under heat but not enough to worry about the flight timer. Batteries charged and I did a taxi test. Nothing notable as things were tracking well though I had forgotten how bumpy our field is for warbirds. Taxi back and it was time for a range check. All fine there too. Let my nerves cool off and did some tidying up in the trailer and then just plugged it all in and went for it. Wind was slightly cross with about 5-10mph. Lined up and throttle up slowly to 2/3 and we were off the ground a bit soon with leveling out keeping the nose pointed level. Airspeed gained made me more comfortable to pull back and gain some altitude. Nose-down was apparent but not intrusive. A couple of clicks of right roll and we were mostly trimmed. Some refining was needed. I felt comfortable enough to finally let the gear go up and the airplane was much more neutral. A touch nose heavy, which helps keep things stable. No bad tendencies. Stall was predictable and flaps down had no major ballooning effects. Landing speed with flaps was very manageable, even though the flap down measurement was half that of the recommended throw. With 4 minutes gone on the timer it was time to bring her down so I made a go around and she predictably slowed with the flaps down. I was lined up with three in the green (all gear legs down and locked) so I let her settle in and made a nice soft touch down only to find a bump on the ground to toss me back up. She settled shortly after with not major issues or worse for the wear. Taxi back had the flaps pulled up and all control surfaces still working. Upon shutdown I noticed that one of the main battery plugs had jostled out a bit. It was worrisome so I think I'll spread out the tines for the XT60 plug as well as but some velcro around them to keep them more secured. I'd hate to lose the airplane because a battery plug vibrated out. TO be fair, this could just be from the very abrupt vibration from landing but that's hard to tell. At least eh velcro held the batteries in place just fine but I really had no reservation about that.
I'll note that after I disassembled the airplane there was no sign of significant heat on the power wires running from the battery to the ESCs. I should also note that the instructions did not mention anything about counter rotation of motors and I did implement this on this aircraft. I made no changes to the thrust angles from stock and experienced zero issues in flight. On the ground, I used minimal inputs to correct take off direction, which was the main point why I wanted this in the first place. It was an easy flight that nobody but me saw. Nobody there to get so much as a picture. My apologies but there you go.
I think we are done with this conversion and ready to move forward with modification.
