Ok, I was chatting with Andre last week, and we were talking about new planes to put under the Christmas tree, erhm... for ourselves
Anyhow, I mentioned I was torn between a HH Radian and a FZ Calypso. They're in the same price range, and I have the micro/UMX Radian, which I do love. A bunch of folks at my RC club also fly the full size Radian (and the micro one) at the flying field. There are also a bunch of advanced soarers who have the fullhouse, built up, sailplanes who winch launch, etc.
My curiosity with learning to fly an electric launched foamie glider resulted in a failed self-control attempt at not ordering the Calypso. It was made worse by TowerHobbies having a scratch-and-dent TX-Ready version with only minor box damage for sale. I pulled the trigger, and $170 later, I'm an owner of a Calypso with some spare props and an Anylink2 in case I want to use the RX that comes with it.
Turned out the RX was one of their stubby little antenna ones, and in a soarer with the potential for getting into big thermals, I worried about the range and lack of diversity. So, that RX and the Anylink2 is going in storage.
This means, I will be re-purposing a FrSky L9R RX (the long range RX) and splitting the ailerons to separate channels.
I've already cut out the flaps on the wings, and installed flap servos using 9g servos I already had. In experimenting with them using a servo tester, I found they had plenty of down flap range when setup with max mechanical throws to allow for me to program them as flaps or spoilers. First question, for anyone with experience with this stuff: Does it make sense to have the flaps configured as spoilers as well? I know I can simply program crow / spoilers with the ailerons for landing, but do you think it might be useful to have flaps that can also act as spoilers / add reflex near the root of the wing?
My next step is programming a model in OpenTX for this plane, and I already suspect I'll start off with the throttle on the normal throttle channel / left stick (I fly mode 2), and the flaps assigned to a side-pot on my Taranis. I may flip that around later once I get more experience. For the first few flights, I probably won't even touch the flaps and will only gradually add them at altitude to see what happens.
On that note, any Taranis soaring pilots have any experience/insight into all the exotic soaring mixing possible? Again, I see the configuration changing as follows:
Beginner stages: Throttle on left throttle stick. Flaps on pot.
Intermediate stages: Setup launch mode where throttle is on left stick, when soaring mode, where left stick = flap (full down throttle = 0 flap, full up throttle = full flaps)
Advanced stages: Set up soaring modes: thermal with a little camber dialed in to both flaps and ailerons, crow/landing mode: with aileron reflex mixed in with the flaps, here's where I might be experimenting a bit -- I'd like an additional brake mode where I keep the ailerons in their default configuration, but have the flaps work as spoilers instead of flaps, adding reflex to the root of the wings. As I see it (from a non-aeronautics engineering/laymans perspective) this might be safer than flaps down in terms of preventing tip stalls.
Anyway, I guess it won't hurt to experiment.
Anyhow, I mentioned I was torn between a HH Radian and a FZ Calypso. They're in the same price range, and I have the micro/UMX Radian, which I do love. A bunch of folks at my RC club also fly the full size Radian (and the micro one) at the flying field. There are also a bunch of advanced soarers who have the fullhouse, built up, sailplanes who winch launch, etc.
My curiosity with learning to fly an electric launched foamie glider resulted in a failed self-control attempt at not ordering the Calypso. It was made worse by TowerHobbies having a scratch-and-dent TX-Ready version with only minor box damage for sale. I pulled the trigger, and $170 later, I'm an owner of a Calypso with some spare props and an Anylink2 in case I want to use the RX that comes with it.
Turned out the RX was one of their stubby little antenna ones, and in a soarer with the potential for getting into big thermals, I worried about the range and lack of diversity. So, that RX and the Anylink2 is going in storage.
This means, I will be re-purposing a FrSky L9R RX (the long range RX) and splitting the ailerons to separate channels.
I've already cut out the flaps on the wings, and installed flap servos using 9g servos I already had. In experimenting with them using a servo tester, I found they had plenty of down flap range when setup with max mechanical throws to allow for me to program them as flaps or spoilers. First question, for anyone with experience with this stuff: Does it make sense to have the flaps configured as spoilers as well? I know I can simply program crow / spoilers with the ailerons for landing, but do you think it might be useful to have flaps that can also act as spoilers / add reflex near the root of the wing?
My next step is programming a model in OpenTX for this plane, and I already suspect I'll start off with the throttle on the normal throttle channel / left stick (I fly mode 2), and the flaps assigned to a side-pot on my Taranis. I may flip that around later once I get more experience. For the first few flights, I probably won't even touch the flaps and will only gradually add them at altitude to see what happens.
On that note, any Taranis soaring pilots have any experience/insight into all the exotic soaring mixing possible? Again, I see the configuration changing as follows:
Beginner stages: Throttle on left throttle stick. Flaps on pot.
Intermediate stages: Setup launch mode where throttle is on left stick, when soaring mode, where left stick = flap (full down throttle = 0 flap, full up throttle = full flaps)
Advanced stages: Set up soaring modes: thermal with a little camber dialed in to both flaps and ailerons, crow/landing mode: with aileron reflex mixed in with the flaps, here's where I might be experimenting a bit -- I'd like an additional brake mode where I keep the ailerons in their default configuration, but have the flaps work as spoilers instead of flaps, adding reflex to the root of the wings. As I see it (from a non-aeronautics engineering/laymans perspective) this might be safer than flaps down in terms of preventing tip stalls.
Anyway, I guess it won't hurt to experiment.