My Art tech F4U

[Non Action Man]

I've had it only a little while, and have about 5 flights on it. I love this plane, it flies nice, and very quiet. well, not as quite now that the motor shaft is a smidge bent. With the stock set up its very economical, I put a 2.2Ah in it and I haven't been able to fly out a battery yet. [edit] I flew for about 10 minutes, and the charger only put 763mAh into the battery!

I just re-maidened it after I put flaps on it They work work well, and the glide slope is really shallow now, and nice and slow.

I had a really good flight, I was only stopped by failing light. I did a few practice passes, then made the last attempt. It landed so smoothly, even rolling to a nice stop on short grass. I have never been able to get it to not nose over on grass. I was really impressed at the difference the flaps made, as it used to be a bit slick on the glide into landing.

All in all, good day!

NAM

 

[earthsciteach]

Thanks for the review of the Art-Tech. Where did you purchase it? Nice job on the flaps. How are the inner two segments connected to the segment with the control horn?

 

[Ak Flyer]

Good review. Glad to hear you are having lots of fun with it. I was especially happy to hear it doesn't nose over all the time. I hate replacing a prop every time I land.

 

[Non Action Man]

Thanks for the review of the Art-Tech. Where did you purchase it? Nice job on the flaps. How are the inner two segments connected to the segment with the control horn?

I got the plane from HK.

I use some thin plastic (the outer card bit of a sim card) and put them in as slip joints. sorry, the photos aren't very clear. I'll get a new photo shortly.

 

[Non Action Man]

In this photo you can see the 2 pieces of sim card that I used. It works quite well. I made one side a tight fit and the other a bit looser so the card would slide.

Here is the under side of the wing, cutting out the holes for the servos made an awful mess! bits of styrene everywhere.

I used pinned hinges, as I didn't want to use tape. I felt that the curved centre and inner section would have caused all sorts of problems. I put the hinges at 5mm up from the bottom surface. One of my goals was to have the un-deployed flaps be as un intrusive as possible, without having to cut big clearance grooves.

I was originally looking at putting the control horn on the centre segment, as that would make the most sense, but that is also the lowest part of the wing. I didnt want to risk damaging the servo if for some reason I belly landed it. It is also directly behind the landing gear, and if I want/could put retracts on it, then they'd be in the way.

The mod wasn't hard to do, it was just doing the first cut into an otherwise new wing that I was a bit hesitant about.

Oh, and a big thanks to Pilot Scott for the servo reversing video, I used that on this mod.

NAM

 

[Non Action Man]

Dorked the landing yesterday... but thankfully a quick fix.

 

[earthsciteach]

The slide connectors are very clever!

 

[Non Action Man]

well... its about 15m up a tree atm I tried for a few hours but I couldnt get it down. I went flying because it was a really still day!

Its a problem of a lack of depth perception....

 

[colorex]

Very well done! But now you gotta get it back!

 

[Klonas]

You'll have to think of some way of getting it... I'd probably try something with rope (You probably tried that).
Good luck!

 

[Non Action Man]

Its stuck good and proper.... its been blowing a gale and its still up there! I'm gonna try some string again today, then if that fails, a friend has a bow, hopefully we can snag it with out actually hitting it.

 

[Ak Flyer]

A bow with a rubber ball on the end to knock it out of the tree. Tried this once a long time ago, worked pretty well.

 

[Non Action Man]

well, the wind came through, Its back in my possession.

It broke off the nose section, which was pretty much expected,

But it broke the motor mount too, and ripped 2 of the bullet connectors off the motor!

The wing it surprisingly in tact. One servo came out, and at least one of the flap servos is stripped, but I have yet to check them all under operation.

A bit of minor damage to the tail HStab, and the VStab has been cracked at the base.

There was one part I couldn't find, A little plastic piece that the hooks onto 2 prongs on the fuse, but it wont be hard to make something.

Other than being a bit wet all the electronics seem ok, except the battery, it was at 3.8 volts when I got to it.... that's a 3S battery! I'm not holding out much hope, but I'm trying to save it. I think one cell is completely stuffed, its only reading 0.74 volts. Its a shame, that's a brand new battery!

NAM

 

[Non Action Man]

Yep, the battery is stuffed! the outer 2 charged up ok~ish but the centre one wont take any charge at all. I even tried just charging the centre cell by itself, but to no avail.

 

[Jeffrey Saelee]

I hate it when batteries stuff....I had a 1.6Ah 2S a few months ago, that stuffed. It was the only 2S I had so it grounded a plane. One single cell was somewhere around 7 volts! At least that's what my $2 battery monitor said. The other was somewhere around 0 I think.