I'm almost 71 and I'm starting a new hobby. I flew my first rc airplane yesterday. A Volantex Super Cub 500. I had watched every flitetest video on how to fly and it payed off. I flew for approximately 10 minutes before I had to land the plane. It lost power, I thought the battery was depleted, but the cog gear drive on the end of the electric motor came off during flight. Now to find a replacement part for it and fly some more. What a high it gave me.
New to FliteTest aviation
- Thread starter wccox11
- Start date
That's awesome that you got to fly for 10 minutes.
One thing I would suggest, though - don't fly until the battery gets depleted, for several reasons:
1) If you're flying an electric plane, most of the time the controls are powered by the same battery that controls the motor. If the battery's depleted, so are your controls. That plane will then start going down, and you'll have no control to bring it down where you want it - it might end up hitting the ground, a tree, or worse, a car or person.
2) Rechargeable batteries tend not to like being run down to empty; sometimes they won't charge back up, or if they do, they have a risk of becoming puffy, and puffy batteries can catch fire. Most of the people I fly with run their batteries down to 3.75-3.8v per cell. I've seen other people say they've taken theirs down to 3.5v per cell, but I tend to err on the side of caution so that I know I have enough power left in case I need to circle a little for the runway to clear - say, someone's taxied out and is trying to take off, or someone crashed at the end of the runway and is going out to collect the pieces, or there's a glider that's landed and the pilot has to go out to retrieve it.
How do you determine the flight times? Set a timer for 5 minutes when you take off, and land at the end of 5 minutes. Test your battery and see what the voltage is like; that'll give you an idea of how much longer you can fly.
Good luck with the flights, and I'm glad you're hooked!
Awesome! 10 minutes on your first flight is amazing - not something that I was able to pull off...
No worries, just want to throw that suggestion at you. I've had several guys in my club have lipos go up while charging, one of which lost his den and several planes. If my warnings and suggestions help keep people thinking safer, that's all I can ask for.
I've had several guys in my club have lipos go up while charging, one of which lost his den and several planes. If my warnings and suggestions help keep people thinking safer, that's all I can ask for.I was a nervous wreck while flying. I went over and over on the controls to make sure I knew what did what. I'm still stoked over flying the aircraft on my own.Awesome! 10 minutes on your first flight is amazing - not something that I was able to pull off...
