New Builder in Maryland

[mikeporterinmd]

Hope to change this to "New flyer in Maryland" soon. Just finished a Tiny Trainer. It came out pretty well, but I may redo the wing.

I didn't have the sharpest knife and I didn't realize how steep a cut I needed to make. The end result is still a pretty decent wing, but there is a lot of tape on it. Don't know how well it will fly. Also, there is more damage on one side than the other, so there could a be a left/right CG issue. Need to check that.

Quick question: in order to obtain the correct CG, I have to push my 50gram 2S 800mah battery really far in the fuselage. Nearly as far back as the hole in the bottom. Is this common? I can see no reason why the front of my plane would be terribly nose heavy. It was built exactly according to the video and uses power pack A with no substitutions. The ESC is where it should be.

Thanks,

Mike Porter
Elkton, MD

 

[mikeporterinmd]

I think what happened is I installed the servos too far forward, and I have a relatively heavy receiver to the front of CG as well. All it took was abut 5 grams of washers glued to the stabilizer to get the battery back where it was designed to be so precise CG can be set.

Next time, I'll move the servos aft and use a [XD]4R-II FrSky instead of the X8R (I happened to have one.) Just finished remaking the wing and got a nice leading edge this time. Then I added polyurethane and so everything should last a bit longer. Maybe I'll put some paint on this week if I have spare time.

Mike

 

[offaxis]

FYI, you guys may be close enough for this eveny. Figured I'd share. There is a big swap meet coming up in Lebanon, PA. http://cpaa.us/

 

[ttprigg]

Hey Mike,
Welcome to the world of Flitetest. I'm down in Baltimore, not too far away.
Reading your message, keeping a plane light is important, the position of the battery is not. I would suggest balancing it without additional weight if you can.

 

[rockyboy]

Welcome to the FT Tiny Trainer team! I love my FTTT - it's been a great plane to learn with, and even after a good number of "hard landings" and a few cartwheels she still flys! I'd recommend against working too much on "pretty" stuff until you have a good number of successful flights.

The thing that messed my FTTT up the most was some early morning flying and landing in dewy grass. The moisture has made a curvy mess of the horizontal stabilizer and tail section. I'm getting ready to rebuild the body and try some urethane/fiberglassing in place of the paper to make it more waterproof, especially on the stabilizer surfaces, but I'm leaving the nose and wing plain old DTFB w/ some bright packing tape for strength, visibility, and low weight.

And if you have questions about the inevitable upcoming repairs, feel free to give me a shout. I can say from experience, don't make the removable nose stronger than the body where the skewers connect everything together. When she comes screaming in lawn-dart style, something is going to give, and it's easier to rebuild a nose section than a body. Hot-gluing in some credit-card sections to the body with holes for the skewers really helped repairs from my second big crash go quicker.

Good luck!