Simple slender delta

[Dr. Looping Looie]

Trojan in my opinion is not a good trainer. It relies too much on its own power. Did the Trojan come with a Transmitter? The standard super cheap RTF tx from Horizon or is it from Spectrum? Do you know If it uses DSMX or If you can bind it to another model? If so, I would actually recommend getting the E-Flite UMX Whipit. It might not be what you want, but belive me, this thing is fun, and being a full scale glider pilot, I cant tell you enough how helpful it is to fly without engines. Flying good means flying efficient, your making good turns If your not loosing your energy. On gliders, this is more important than on any other plane, because you want to stay in the air as long as possible. It will be the best training to get the right skills and also lots of knowlage.

 

[Vimana89]

I may try a glider but I could probably build a 2 channel very basic glider out of FB that would save me $70. I can try to look up or double check the exact transmitter with my Trojan . It says E-flite on it and seems pretty decent. One home building question on high-mounted pushers and thrust angle. From what I read, you need a slight up angle and it should go through your cg. What if your motor and prop are slightly in front of your cg? Would I need a drastic thrust angle or would the build just not work at all?

 

[Dr. Looping Looie]

I may try a glider but I could probably build a 2 channel very basic glider out of FB that would save me $70. I can try to look up or double check the exact transmitter with my Trojan . It says E-flite on it and seems pretty decent. One home building question on high-mounted pushers and thrust angle. From what I read, you need a slight up angle and it should go through your cg. What if your motor and prop are slightly in front of your cg? Would I need a drastic thrust angle or would the build just not work at all?

In all my pushers, theres zero thrust angle, it depends where your center of thrust is located vs your center of drag. Your design with the wing far down should go with a little bit downword thrust(Motor pushes air a little up, causing your nose to go down.

 

[Vimana89]

My scrap heap slender delta is almost done. Would have put it off until I had a bit more skill, but I needed a little hands-on practice experimenting with new fuselage techniques and stuff while I order new parts and decide my next move, and I only had enough Adams board scraps left for a slender wing. Here she is, just need to place and link servos. Hopefully even if she doesn't work I can learn something new to use in the future. Just building it already gave me ideas how to build the next fuselage better on any plane I decide to make. Will test tomorrow if possible.

 

[Vimana89]

Should I tape/glue/seal all my leading edges with white core exposed before launch or is that not necessary? I haven't been on most occasions so far.

 

[Dr. Looping Looie]

@Vimana89 I dont seal edges, but If you want to, go for it! Its not necessary but also doesnt hurt.
But on your picture, the thrust angle looks too much. For the delta, it should be a maximum of 5 degrees.

 

[Vimana89]

@Vimana89 I dont seal edges, but If you want to, go for it! Its not necessary but also doesnt hurt.
But on your picture, the thrust angle looks too much. For the delta, it should be a maximum of 5 degrees.

Good catch. It shouldn't be much trouble for me to remount when I get a chance to link the servos and finish up the build.

 

[Vimana89]

Build done. I'll test tomorrow if possible. I adjusted my thrust angle to be much less drastic, and although my linkages are still a bit crude, I got them better than normal and my elevons have quite a large range of motion.

 

[Vimana89]

I remembered one crucial thing this morning about the way the prop should be facing. I believe I'd forgotten about it last time I tried this with the prop in slot made from elmers board. I believe that one would have flown if I'd gotten the prop facing the right way. I headed out to test this morning with everything correct, but the results weren't that great. This one can fly straight for a bit without stability issues, and it can begin a climb, but it's not super stable during the climb, probably trim issues, then rolls over and crashes. I try to correct, it rolls and crashes. I turn, it barrel rolls and crashes. Part of it is my skill and I know this type of plane has a touchy roll axis, but I may have some extra stability or control issues here. Either way, at least I remembered the thing about the props and I'm getting full power out of my A pack now.

 

[Vimana89]

I can repair my plane and take it back out when the wind dies down a bit, but I'm not too sure what I can really learn from it right now. Prop's on right, cg is good, controls respond fine in pre flight check, but as soon as she's in the air I don't seem to have much control, as every input seems to lead to instability and crash. Maybe I have to try to go super super gentle on the banking/rolling part, pitch axis is much less sensitive. I think my best bet for now short of rebuilding or trying a simpler build is to just repair, launch again, and try to gather more details about what's going wrong. Other than that, I can try adding some low profile canards or fiddling with linkages.For all I actually know it could be all or mostly pilot error.

 

[Vimana89]

One thing I'm thinking it could be off the top of my head is it's just not a large enough air frame for that top heavy high pusher and 6 inch prop. If I build this design again with an a-pack I'll want to make the plane quite a bit bigger and/or give a prop in slot design another try to make a lower profile fuselage. I also just double checked the cg that I thought was right and found that it was actually too far forward, so that's gotta be one contributing factor. I'm finding as I repair I can move my esc up to where my battery was and move my battery to the rear of the nose directly in front my prop, which will give me a proper cg.

 

[Vimana89]

Today, I finished repairing. I nailed down the cg pretty good and made the thrust angle more neutral. It started to fly very nicely forward, but I began to try to climb, and I believe I didn't give it enough throttle or something because it just slowed down and continued to fly forward cleanly but on a nice high alpha. I tried to bank but just rolled into the ground. I tried one more, but believe I hand launched incorrectly and tried to climb too fast. Rolled and crashed hard and is now completely busted. Any way to get this thing to bank and turn better, or am I just not giving it enough altitude and throttle? Could my controls be too sensitive or could I perhaps be over-controlling?

 

[Paracodespoder]

Lower your aileron rates and add 60 or so % expo if possible.

 

[Vimana89]

Using a cheap hobby king transmitter and an onboard elevon v tail mixer. Sounds like your talking about tweaking the sensitivity with my transmitter, which mine doesn't t do. I could try to manually make the controls less sensitive. I'm not super good at linking controls but I can try to take some measures to make it better.

 

[DamoRC]

Using a cheap hobby king transmitter and an onboard elevon v tail mixer. Sounds like your talking about tweaking the sensitivity with my transmitter, which mine doesn't t do. I could try to manually make the controls less sensitive. I'm not super good at linking controls but I can try to take some measures to make it better.

If you make the control horns on the elevons a lot taller (say 2x) you will cut back your throws. Pity about not having expo - I think it would help your flying.

 

[Vimana89]

I'm about due to order some parts and equipment for building. Push rods, servos, another electronics kit, maybe a B for slow flyer builds. While I'm in the process of shopping around And weighing my options I'm still experimenting with what I have. I think I may shop around for a better transmitter too.

 

[Dr. Looping Looie]

Today, I finished repairing. I nailed down the cg pretty good and made the thrust angle more neutral. It started to fly very nicely forward, but I began to try to climb, and I believe I didn't give it enough throttle or something because it just slowed down and continued to fly forward cleanly but on a nice high alpha. I tried to bank but just rolled into the ground. I tried one more, but believe I hand launched incorrectly and tried to climb too fast. Rolled and crashed hard and is now completely busted. Any way to get this thing to bank and turn better, or am I just not giving it enough altitude and throttle? Could my controls be too sensitive or could I perhaps be over-controlling?

That sounds like
A: its underpowered. If your motor cant bring it to climb infinitely vertical, you cant really power off of that high alpha. You will first have to build up more speed before starting a climb.
B: Thats exactly what I said about first getting your flying skills right. This thing is nothing like a standard airplane. Because of its great high-alpha capebility, it doesnt really care where your elevator is. Its roll axis on the other hand is super sensitive. Beginners usually have the problem that they overcontrol. A good DIY fix for you might be the discs for the transmitter Josh Bixler did:

And please do what we say, start small and then grow! First, do something with simulators! Even if you can just use your keyboard, you will still learn alot. Then build a simple trainer. And this way isn not even longer, because there are less frustrating fails, less rebuilds and more fun. Your slender delta wont go away, but belive me, its much more fun to fly a delta if you are a more expirenced pilot. I know you want it now, but most cool skills take a lot of time to learn. So go ahead and practice with someting simple! Get your flying right first, so you have more fun later.

 

[Vimana89]

I believe the A pack motor should technically have had enough juice. The one instance I said was likely pilot error. I launched at like 70-80% thrust, let it fly straight a bit, then pitched up to initiate a climb. That's where I should have given it full throttle to actually break into a climb, because I guess just pitching the nose up without a throttle increase just puts it into high alpha. This is the whole thing about paying attention to throttle on that particular build I suppose. It will be extra tough to fly one of these without expo because Ideally I would want to leave the pitch axis as is and decrease sensitivity on the roll axis a lot. In the mean time, I'll be shopping for parts and looking into options for simulators. I'm also comparing plans and builds for different newb trainer type planes, and working up one of my own design to experiment with too that will be much more basic than a delta. It's 3 channel RET, has dihedrals for self-leveling, a slotted pusher for thrust vectoring, and will be the most simple thing to build with very few parts.

 

[Vimana89]

Also, the disc thing is pretty handy. I may try that if overcontrolling continues to be a problem.

 

[Vimana89]

My design I'm messing with now will get its own thread if it flies well or shows a lot of promise. I'm calling it the "squarejet" for now, lol. It's like a square nutball with a mid pusher for thrust vectoring. My nutball was a tiny 15" diameter of heavy foam, it could fly, but there was no controlling it.if I can get this thing in the air it should be much more controllable and just as easy to slap together.