Look Ma! I can fly! Seriously, I got legit air time today!

[OrangutangSurfer]

I got the FT delta out today, weather app says 7-8mph winds, it felt windier than that but I went for it anyway. Apparently, I CAN fly a plane, not with any such grace but I was able to keep it in the air and fly a pattern, i did some circles and some figure 8’s. It was much easier having the space to fly.

I still have a few problems though, I think it still feels terribly underpowered it might just be the 24g motor I tried both 8x6 and 9x4.7 props I think the 9” did better but I wasn’t in the air long, i’ll get to that in a minute.

So whats the deal with the spiral of death? I had two crashes totally my fault, the first well I’m new so therefore I crash, and the second it got down wind and I couldn’t get it back so I put in down before it went any further, after that I maintained altitude and kept it up wind.

Two other crashes involved me trying to turn around and the plane made a little flip and started this spiral around the nose of the plane, i messed with the controls nothing took it out of the dive, fortunately it survived every crash I put it through (sorta).

The Power pod was a little loose after have the nose smash down several times but against my better judgement I felt it was on tight enough for the circles I was flying in. I put the 9x4.7 prop on to see if I could fight the wind a little better. The wind picked up a little bit since I started, when I banked from flying with the wind to turning across the wind the power pod and the wing separated, the pod came down with out injury and the wing spun lightly to the ground.

The good news, I didn't break a thing today! yay! The bad news, despite the minutes felt like hours I was surprised that I still didn't run that 1500mah battery down all the way.

I'm going to add a velcro strap around the front of the power pod similarly to how I've strapped the battery down. This way the pod won't come apart again. I really think I've bashed that motor in to the ground so many times that it doesn't spin at full speed that's why I'm so underpowered, I have a turnigy 2822 1450kv in the mail and should arrive this weekend I'll stick that on and see how it goes.

-Jes

 

[makattack]

I'm not familiar with the delta, but I suspect it's characteristics are similar to the versa wing... Someone wrote an interesting article about reflex/washouts and how they pertain to flight characteristics on flying wings:
http://flitetest.com/articles/flying-wing-set-up-wash-out-and-reflex

I had an incident with my versa wing where, coming in on approach to a landing, I had a great glide slope and as it reached between 1-2 ft off the ground, and I started to flare, the wind picked up and shifted directions, moving the versa wing. I tried to compensate, and thought I overcompensated because it ended up rolling and landing upside down. No damage other than an antenna shroud/mast that needed to be re-glued (a coffee stirrer). I thought I overcompensated and it couldn't have been a tip-stall, even though it looked like a tip stall. I had thought, incorrectly, that wings don't tip stall due to how well it seemed to glide. Again, wrong. I think the combination of changing wind direction, with a strong gust, and using elevons to adjust (vs rudder which don't exist on wings) yaw/roll was the reason why it tip stalled. I'm guessing that on your turns, you got into a steep roll that resulted in a tip-stall. Going downwind, you might have done a powered stall where the wind was blowing greater than your motor/prop thrust.

 

[OrangutangSurfer]

is there any way out of that spin? I did get in to a similar spin that I managed to recover from I can't say for sure but I think I punched it with some up elevator but it wasn't the same spiral of death and I had enough altitude to feel comfortable pushing the throttle.

This is the 4th plane I've attempted to fly, it's been too windy to even do anything with the old speedster, the FT22 did a couple circles before landing 40 up in a tree, yeah it might have been my fault LOL. also built an FT flyer also no fun in the wind. in the middle of all this I took my time building a Spitfire and I'm itching to fly it, I wanted to get some air time with some planes I wouldn't mind crashing as much and I've posted elsewhere about my problems most of which I've over come at this point, except the wind. I'm about to get gutsy and just take the spitfire out when my new esc gets here. Like I said I'm not graceful in the air but I certainly have enough skill to stay in the air. There are more windy days here than not, If I can't find something that can fly in 10-12 mph winds I'll never build up any skill. I keep hearing good things about the bloody wonder, I might try that, same bank and yank as the delta but with a better glide slope and I hear they are great in the wind too. I'll use that 2822 motor, it's a step up from that 24g I've been using I think I need the extra power when flying in the wind. It's either that or another F22 I saw some guys flying the FT speed build F22 kit at the same place earlier this week and it was much windier than it was this morning, it might be a little more forgiving on my equipment with out the prop on the nose too. hmm... decisions, decisions....

-Jes

 

[makattack]

I think in most stall situations, the solution is to get more airspeed, in a gentle manner. It doesn't mean going full 100% throttle as fast as you can... it means, dropping the nose slightly, going up throttle smoothly, and counteracting any of the spins, etc as best you can gently.

This is why having plenty of altitude is important. Sometimes, you just don't have enough altitude to recover, and that's when "inadvertent contact with ground/object" situations occur.

I find flying in any wind kind of stressful, but have learned how to handle it more as I've flown more in it. I learn I have to throttle up when going down-wind, and to actually ease off a bit going up wind. This also depends on how strong the wind is and might require other options.

I think that practicing in the wind is an important skill. Crashing and mishaps are ok, and almost a part of the hobby. As long as no one's hurt, and you learn from those incidents, they can be useful. Having an inexpensive, durable, easy to repair airframe is very important for this. Have patience. I posted my lessons learned with building my first ever scratch built FliteTest plane, the FT-22, and my impatience was what caused all the foam creases and extra tape on my airframe!

http://flitetest.com/articles/usaf-thunderbirds-themed-flite-test-f-22-build

 

[nistrum]

i would say provided you have the altitude (and at this point you really need height on your side). as you start to spin throttle down and point your nose at the ground. i would probably suggest throwing opposing rudder in too. that should stop you from spinning. then throttle back up and pull out of the dive.
if your a nose down attitude spinning and you throttle up the grounds just gonna come up and give your plane a big friendly hug.

 

[whiskeyjack]

I don't know if what I am about to say will make sense but I hope it will.

Downwind or upwind your airspeed is the same, what changes is ground speed. When you are standing on the ground the aircraft looks like it is going faster downwind, which it is relative to you.

When you slow your airspeed down, for example on approach, you will experience "adverse yaw" if you use the elverons or ailerons to compensate for a change in the roll axis. The down going control surface actually creates more drag and in doing so increases the turn into downside wing. The result is a spin or roll into the high wing. This occurs due to the higher wing stalling first.

If you have rudder you input rudder to the high side to level the wing, if you don't have rudder then this becomes a problem. I am used to flying the real deal, RC is sure giving me problems as i am still trying to get my head on the ground instead of in the cockpit but like all of you, one day I"ll get there. WJ.

 

[OrangutangSurfer]

I think I had a fair mount of altitude it was spinning fast enough that getting any kind of orientation was impossible, I tried hard left then hard right I held each long enough that the plane should have responded but nothing. by the time I though about giving extra throttle I knew if it didn't work I'd just be punching in to the earth a little harder.

Despite it all, It was the first "flight" I've had and I'm more hooked in the hobby than I was yesterday.

I forgot to mention one crash, it was a loud one! I hadn't been in the air probably a minute and trim was way off, so far that after I recovered my plane readjusted the linkage stoppers. Anyway, as I was attempting to trim and fly it got a bit away from me and I tried to recover, and BANG! i smashed in to the sheet metal roof of the park restrooms. I and some good luck cause a park maintenance person was there and got a ladder and I climbed on the roof to recover it. I must have gone full nose first cause I couldn't find any other damage. after my adjustments I was back in the air, trim off just a tad but I sucked it up and flew it that way and had a blast!!!

-Jes

I'm thinking that I'll probably build another F22 to protect the motor a bit until I get a better feel on the wind.

 

[OrangutangSurfer]

Downwind or upwind your airspeed is the same, what changes is ground speed. When you are standing on the ground the aircraft looks like it is going faster downwind, which it is relative to you.

I'm aware of the air speed thing the problem is that my against the wind speed (relative to my position) is to slow making it difficult to keep the plane in my preferred airspace. as soon as I make my turn to circle around the wind pulls me far downwind and i'm still new at the whole reverse orientation I get it right about 50% of the time. anyway it gets to the point where I feel like the frog in the well. I'm going to try a slightly higher powered setup as I have said there are more windy days here than not so I better gear up for it! I think the spiral of death is something the delta is prone to, so now that I know I can fly I'll try a different plane and see if I do any better.


-Jes

 

[nistrum]

if it makes you feel any better i took my supercub out to fly today. windy but liveable with... it was its first time out this year and something is obviously out of kilter as it was pulling down and to the left. i fought with it and tried it trim it out (resulting in my trim wheel hard up to the right) but ultimately i had to get it back on the ground. managed to get it facing into the wind, dropped my speed and got it to get about 5ft flat and level, wind speed went up and it pulled my nose up just enough to stall see my left wing dip and roll my plane one hot glued tail later and I'm gonna have to investigate the root of my problem we all have these problems

 

[OrangutangSurfer]

I think that's why I love this dollar store scratch build stuff. I bought 10 sheets and tried to make good use of every square inch I could. I managed to build the following:

Old Speedster
F22 x2
Spitfire
FT Flyer
FT Delta

So 6 planes for $10 bucks isn't a loss in my book. the old speedster is still alive but doesn't fly well (at least I haven't had a calm enough day to say that it does) My first F22 met it's fate 40+ feet in a tree. I haven't flown the spitfire yet I want to enjoy more flying than crashing with that one. The delta is my only successful flying plane. I built another F22 so I wouldn't be ramming the motor in the dirt repeatedly and to avoid the delta's spiral of death.

-Jes

 

[Ron B]

Way to go and to bad we don't have wings to hand out for 1st successful flight.
success being take off, turn, cross wind, turn, down wind, turn cross wind, turn, headwind and land. If it crashes it is still a flight.

 

[nistrum]

hahah. i like the idea. and good thinking suirfer on the pusher to save your kit

 

[Hookdriver]

Sounds like your center of gravity mat be a bit far aft. If the spin if flattening out and and becoming unrecoverable there is too much weight too far back. If you do nothing but reduce the throttle a bit and neutralize the controls the air craft should recover within a turn or two. You will be in a dive so dont be too hasty to recover the aircraft or you will stall the aircraft again.....if you are the slightest bit corss controlled during the secondary stall recovery the aircraft could re-enter the spin. A spin is entered when and aircraft appoaches a stall and one wing stops producing lift before the other. The wing that is still flying induces a spiral.

If properly balanced all of the flitetest aircraft will attempt to recover on their own. The FT-3D needed a bit of aileron to cleanly stop the spin. On that aircraft I purposefully set it up slightly aft of the stock cg location. It was designed to be unstable and when pushed to be more unstable it was. If you have no choice it is better to be a touch forward rather than aft. The problem with a forward cg is that you could run out of aft stick( up elevator) travel when you are attempting to land the aircraft. If you can fly the approach a little faster this can usually be over come. The cg should be spot on, but each aircraft is a bit different. Full size aircraft have a range the cg can be in. The fact that our airframes are more compact dictates that the range be more compact as well.

Altitude is your friend and airspeed is life. One of the questions an FAA examiner can ask you for a private pilot checkride is: when can a stall occur? The answer is any attitude or airspeed. It just takes enough change in the angle of attack to separate the flow across the wing. Even though a flat wing is not an airfoil in the typical sense the basic rules of aerodynamics apply. These aircraft can be a bit draggy. Especially the slow fliers. More lift, more drag. When I was teaching my kids to fly the speedster I had them keep it well up wind. They could make a quick downwind turn and set up for landing coming over there shoulder from a very safe distance above them. You can always move downwind but it can be a bit tricky to get back upwind.

I like to do what you do. When I have all the stuff out to cut out one I cut out two planes worth parts. That way when I turn my F-22 into a pretzel I yank the guts out, cut the tail of for the wall of shame and throw the shell in the trash bin on the way out of the airfield.
These inexpensive little airframes really take the stress out of crashing. The fact that you can put one together from cut parts in less than an hour makes them hands down the best way to learn to fly. Sims are a great tool but nothing replaces the wind and sun. Light poles aroung the field I fly at have claimed a few of my aircraft. I was making speed runs with my spitfire giggling like our favorite swede when I found out the hard way that my circuits were getting a few feet larger each time. The trees on the departure end of the field are about 75 ft tall and the spit will take branches off! It is a mistake that I wont make again. That is the trick. Make the mistakes, but learn from them so you only make them once. Sorry this got a bit wordy. The learing curve for rc flying is steep......but not that tall.
Let us know how the next adventure at the flying field goes!

Josh Brock

 

[OrangutangSurfer]

Josh,

No worries I get wordy more often than not. in regards to my spiral of death i would say the plane was close to a 45 degree angle I'm sure the reason it stalled was my inexperience and probably throttling down to much in a down wind turn. I was flying with a 118g 1500mah battery so even an 1/8" adjustment in the battery significantly changed the CG, I had it near level, that being said it was a scratch build my cg marks could have been off and I probably should have erred on the side of caution and put it a touch nose down for "just in casies." It flew great otherwise, no control issues, maybe a little touchy on the controls but probably more my tx setup than the plane.

Despite my failures I'm having lots of fun. I just got off a 3 hour Skype call with my little brother who lives 1500 miles away, He is coming to town for business and will have a day off to chill so I was gonna show him my planes, I mentioned flight test to him in an email and he went on to talk about his park zone raidan glider and trex 450 hell, I had no idea he was in RC, clearly we don't hang out enough. So while he is in town we are gonna go and fly/crash every plane I have for as long as my wife will let us get away with it. I'm going to maiden the spitfire with an NTM 2826 1200kv motor and a 2200mah battery. and hope for the best, i think the flight characteristics are probably more appropriate for the conditions out here and i'll have plenty of up wind power which has been my biggest challenge so far. I'll have my 2nd FT22 to maiden that might happen tomorrow if I can find the time.

I'm supper stoked, and with the extra person there I'm gonna bring my DSLR with my zoom lens and attempt a kickass maiden video for the spitfire.

-Jes

 

[Hookdriver]

Good luck with the maiden. I really liked the spitfire.....then I removed three inches from each wingtip. Now I am in love with it! I think for the next one I may try to build a spitfire with the ft racer wing in it. A similar span reduction should make things lively. The F-22 has its good points and bad. The good is that it can be cutout and assembled in short order. The bad is that the wing is a single sheet and tends to get "mushy" pretty quickly even with gentle approaches. A carbon tube or even bbq skewers for a spar keeps the wings from developing fatigue induced dihedral.

I built a field box out of dollar tree foam board and the spot that holds the tape gets used a lot more than I thought it would. If built right these little airframes are incredibly strong and easy to repair. Let all know how the maiden flight goes. The spitfire tracks true so a throttle up with a solid left hand toss will give you what you need to get enough altitude to begin adjusting subtrims with out scaring yourself.

If your spin was at a 45 degree nose down then your cg is more than likely fine. You are spot on when you said even an 1/8 of an inch is enough to affect flight characteristics. Sometimes the hardest thing to do is let the aircraft gain airspeed. One of my biggest problems is that I always want to slow the aircraft down. Especially on approach....makes sense. There is a fine line between super sweet slow approach and stall spin. The tricky part is learning to fly closer to the ground with sufficient speed to avoid getting bit by the stall monster. The only cure for me was to realize that I was trying to slow the airplane down and consciously make the decision to fly a tiny bit faster. Then I had to do it enough to be comfortable with it.

Once again good luck with the maiden! It is always good to have a flying buddy. My brother is planning a trip out this summer so we can do pretty much the same thing. Josh