What Did You Fly Today

[legodragonxp]

Many years ago a member of my club gave a similar plane to my kids. Basically it‘s a power glider, more throttle means more lift so it goes up, and throttle differential controls the heading. Change the angle on the horizontal stabilizer would increase the AOA and cause stall. The only way to make it climbs faster is to increase the pitch on the props.

Sounds like a successful first flight, how does it fly considering its controlled by only 2 motors and no servos?

As TDL says, it is a powered stable glider with a auto leveling differential thrust in roll. When trimmed out right, low speed you descend, medium speed to maintain altitude, high speed you climb. Turning is by differential thrust. At high rates your turning circle is about 100ft in diameter in ideal conditions (whatever those are).

Mine needs some trim tuning. When you assemble the vertical stabilizer there is some play on the angle of attack on the horizontal stabilizer. I followed the instructions for my altitude above sea level, but it is a little too tame. I spliced in a shim in to the tail so I added mass aft of CG and tweaked the horizontal stab about a millimeter to increase pitch. It helped a lot, for a while. Then I snapped off the nose wheel again and the tape added cancelled about half the gain. I think I am going to add pieces of tape to the tail next time to shift the CG back until I get a better performance.

Day 2: I almost was taken down by a hawk during one orbit. He only made one pass before a small bird started to harass him.

 

[LitterBug]

Flew billions and billions of blades of grass an quite a few particulates of water. Managed to get a pack through the UMX Tubo Timber before heading home. STO from the pit table.

Cheers!
LitterBug

 

[slowjo]

First day in the hobby flying. FT Freighter in a large parking lot. Learned a lot in a short amount of time, had a few hard crashes but the plane took it well. The T-tail protects the props during your average Jingles landing. I need to figure out a way to improve pitch up on the tail since I have to be flat out to climb. Maybe cut it off and remount it (EDIT, going to splice in a shim and bring extras until I figure it out). I had it pried up with tape for the second half of the flight window and it flew a lot better, but a couple crashes wore out the tape.

Lessons learned:
-Tape the wheels in to the wheel wells. Walking around for 15 minutes looking for one that popped off was annoying. (also consider painting the wheels yellow or blaze orange to help find them)
-Remove the batteries from the transmitter when done. I had the set in for three days, they died before I flew for a minute.
-Hit the rate button and go in to high-rate unless you have a LOT of area to fly in. My area was about 200'x400'. High-rate would be good in a 200x200 area with little to no wind.
View attachment 169708

Welcome I would take the wheels off and look for some grass 😎 ur goin to love flying

 

[slowjo]

I flew almost everything , and there was definitely social distancing 😳

 

[legodragonxp]

Welcome I would take the wheels off and look for some grass 😎 ur goin to love flying

I live in Minneapolis, everything with grass is not legal to fly on. There is a St Paul area nearby that I can try, but honestly I need to CG the C-17 before I will bother. Just finished the EZ Canard (stupid weather) so I might have a double repair job.. er.. feature tomorrow.

 

[KSP_CPA]

Beautiful East TN evening, was finally able to water test my Sea Duck from Christmas. The whole family was on our boat chasing.

 

[speedbirdted]

Got a better bungee. Works pretty good! Today was in the mid 90s and there were thermals everywhere. This thing rides them so nicely.

Sadly this is the only flight I got on camera. The thermals had all gone by that point.

 

[kuhlrunner]

Maidened my FT Bravo this evening. Flies really well... When the elevon servos aren't reversed.
Also finally got my shipment of Mizuei servos, FT Explorer here I come.

 

[The Hangar]

View attachment 169834
Maidened my FT Bravo this evening. Flies really well... When the aileron servos aren't reversed.
Also finally got my shipment of Mizuei servos, FT Explorer here I come.

Sweet! I got my 20 Miuzei servos a couple days ago and already have used almost half! They are awesome servos!

 

[kuhlrunner]

Sweet! I got my 20 Miuzei servos a couple days ago and already have used almost half! They are awesome servos!

I've heard great things about them. Can't wait to get building!

 

[JennyC6]

Glorious Saito boxer noises! I have Monday off, weather's likely gonna be too crappy to fly, so I'll prolly build. I bought some beams for my 4-cycle Simple Scout project so I should probably get cracking on that. Either that or I'll take my Speedyboi ship to the field and chance the skies. The wind is supposed to be 0-5 but 60% chance of storms.

 

[speedbirdted]

Glorious Saito boxer noises! I have Monday off, weather's likely gonna be too crappy to fly, so I'll prolly build. I bought some beams for my 4-cycle Simple Scout project so I should probably get cracking on that. Either that or I'll take my Speedyboi ship to the field and chance the skies. The wind is supposed to be 0-5 but 60% chance of storms.

A guy at my club has an L-19 with one of those on it. Custom exhaust setup, sounds amazing. I haven't met a single person that actually likes the weird flexible headers they give you with it.

 

[JennyC6]

A guy at my club has an L-19 with one of those on it. Custom exhaust setup, sounds amazing. I haven't met a single person that actually likes the weird flexible headers they give you with it.

I'm not fond of them either tbh. I'm putting mine on a SIG 4*64 so I don't know what other solution will work tho.

 

[TheCROZ007]

Just flew the maiden on my first ever build. Haven't painted it yet, but she flew great!

 

[slowjo]

I live in Minneapolis, everything with grass is not legal to fly on. There is a St Paul area nearby that I can try, but honestly I need to CG the C-17 before I will bother. Just finished the EZ Canard (stupid weather) so I might have a double repair job.. er.. feature tomorrow.

worse yet are the weather forecasters, or as I like to call them "the liars club" : )

 

[slowjo]

Glorious Saito boxer noises! I have Monday off, weather's likely gonna be too crappy to fly, so I'll prolly build. I bought some beams for my 4-cycle Simple Scout project so I should probably get cracking on that. Either that or I'll take my Speedyboi ship to the field and chance the skies. The wind is supposed to be 0-5 but 60% chance of storms.

I miss flying with nitro, except when I cant tune it right or it don't start and when its time to clean them to go home, but I do miss the sound and smell : )

 

[FL_Engineer]

Finally got some stick time. It was a mild success although I made 3 water landings and only 1 of those was with floats (the spit was one of them). The Spit is a rocket with the 2836 1500kv. Unfortunately the wind was too much and we called it a day before really trimming it out. Also didn't brave the Mustang or Scout in the wind (10-15 mph). I switched the Timber to wheels after an unsuccessful attempt and had a good flight but the wind pushed me over the pond just as the low voltage cut out kicked in . I can confirm there is at least one gator in the pond.

 

[The Hangar]

Just flew the maiden on my first ever build. Haven't painted it yet, but she flew great!

Congrats on the successful maiden! Is is your first plane ever or just first FT build?

 

[Hoomi]

One flight each on everything here except the Versawing, which didn't make it into the air today. Wind was starting to get iffy, and my stomach was telling me it'd been too long since breakfast, so called it a day after five flights.

I did drop a couple of plastic skydivers from the Storch today. Only issue is, I decided I needed to switch which control moves the servo for the drop, as the one I'd set up wasn't as easy to activate while flying the plane, as I'd thought it would be. I moved the control to the right rear "slider" control. Easy to get to with the index finger, while the thumb stays on the right stick.

Only "casualties" today were, I broke one of the exhaust stacks on the Scout with my finger, while inserting the battery (quick hot glue fix once I got home), and the tape along the bottom sides of the nose on the Tiny Trainer peeled back on the landing. The landing was plenty smooth, but the dirt runway isn't exactly the most gentle to skid across, even for a short distance. I removed the tape, and glued pieces of zip-ties along the bottom edge. The nylon zip ties are pretty durable, and should help protect the foam board from the scrapes along our dirt runway.

Intermittent breeze, and the temperature was running about 87 or so at 9:30. For short while, we had to keep an eye on a crop duster that was working the fields nearby. He didn't get too close while I was flying, but the other two guys at the field said he flew over several times earlier.

 

[speedbirdted]

I'm not fond of them either tbh. I'm putting mine on a SIG 4*64 so I don't know what other solution will work tho.

Get some brass tubes and basically just make the same thing out of them instead. Or make some short headers that basically just direct the exhaust underneath the cylinders. That's how I've always seen it done.